Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC)/ Ultracapacitor (UC) Powered Laptop

Microsoft™ and FuelCell Energy Inc. have created a joint venture to build a fuel cell powered data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The primary challenge, inherent to the project, is the rapid manner with which a data center's power demand changes; coupled with the much slower transient behavior of the fuel cell's power production. The main goal of ProCell Engineering, an Energy Systems Engineering Senior Design team, is to produce a scaled version of the Cheyenne data center project. ProCell utilizes ultracapacitors to provide the supplemental power during abrupt increases in power demand while the fuel cell increases power production. While the fuel cell for Cheyenne's data center will produce 300 kilowatts of power, ProCell's project has been sized down to 75 watts. To further model the system in Cheyenne, an IBM™ laptop was implemented to simulate the data center. The system is designed to operate at ambient room conditions with 5 farads of capacitance and a minimum operating voltage of 13 volts. The successfully designed system will operate under peak load for any duration of time.