PowerCell: Hydrogen Fuel Cells at ECL’s Santa Clara Campus

PowerCell Group has secured an order to supply hydrogen fuel cell systems to ECL's CSC-1 AI data centre campus in Santa Clara, California.

The contract covers PowerCell PS190 fuel cell systems, which will be built into ECL's FlexGrid microgrid architecture as containerised units.

Combined, the units represent an installed capacity in the 5MW class.

The order also includes licences for PowerCell's Distributed Master Controller, a piece of software often referred to by its acronym DMC, which is used to manage how different power sources on a site work together.

In cash terms the deal is valued at approximately SEK 30m (US$2.9m), with deliveries due to be completed by the end of 2026.

From pilot site to primary power

The order follows on from PowerCell's earlier work with ECL at its MV-1 AI data centre in Mountain View, California, where the PS190 systems and DMC software were first deployed and tested operationally.

That deployment forms part of a wider collaboration between ECL, PowerCell and Bosch aimed at rolling out industrial-scale hydrogen fuel cells for AI infrastructure.

CSC-1 itself is a 35 MW AI-optimised campus that draws on grid power, batteries, natural gas and hydrogen fuel cells within ECL's FlexGrid system, an approach intended to keep sites running even if one power source fails.

Crucially, PowerCell frames this as fuel cells moving beyond backup duty and into the primary energy stack, working alongside the DMC and ECL's Lightning energy management platform to keep AI workloads supplied with power.

Power as the bottleneck

Richard Berkling, CEO of PowerCell Group, links the order to the wider infrastructure constraints now facing the data centre sector.

"As demand for computing capacity accelerates, access to reliable power has become one of the industry's biggest constraints," he says.

Richard also points to the operational track record behind the deal.

"ECL deserves significant credit for having continuously operated liquid hydrogen-powered AI infrastructure over the past two years," he explains.

Elsewhere, Yuval Bachar, the Founder and CEO of ECL, was similarly direct about what sits behind the order.

"Every AI roadmap we see is constrained by power not imagination funding or demand," he notes.

Yuval also says that the order followed two years of testing rival fuel cell technologies under live conditions before settling on PowerCell.

"This is not a pilot or a proof of concept we are placing a firm order for PS190 Systems because we have the operational data to back it up."

Manufacturing muscle and a bigger MOU

Bosch's role extends beyond that of a co-signatory.

The German engineering group is both PowerCell's largest shareholder and its manufacturing partner, supplying production capacity and local service support across North America.

For PowerCell, the order is also a strategic marker, part of an effort to build power generation into a second core business line alongside its existing Marine division.

Alongside the firm order, PowerCell and ECL have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding covering approximately 300 MW of additional hydrogen capacity, a figure that dwarfs the current 5 MW contract and hints at where the relationship could go if the Santa Clara installation performs as intended.

Whether that potential converts into further firm orders will likely depend on how CSC-1 performs once fully operational later this year.