ABB has invested £3.25 million in fuel cell company AFC Energy to deliver a high power EV charging system utilising AFC Energy fuel cell technology later this year. The two companies have also announced plans to use the fuel cell technology in data centres.

ABB and AFC signed a Commercialisation and Marketing Agreement in parallel with a Joint Product Development Agreement in December. They have been working towards delivery of an integrated high power EV charging system in the second half of 2021 and say they are are engaging with prospective customers on the new product range.  The new investment will contribute towards the prototyping, engineering, scale up in production capacity and growth across high power e-Mobility applications.

The new development agreement will encompass  test, design and integration of AFC Energy’s alkaline fuel cell technology into ABB’s data centre system portfolio,  to provide a turn-key power solution for the growing number of data centres servicing the world’s data storage and processing requirements.

The agreement will include the assessment of data centre power design principles and system operability, reviewing interfaces between fuel cell, energy storage, electrical equipment, switchgear and control infrastructure. Testing using real time data centre simulation techniques will be adopted. The work is expected to be conducted during the course of 2021 with engagement with the data centre industry throughout.