It occurs to me that if you wanted to run backup generators on veggie, that you could tap some of the waste heat from all the lieberts with a desuperheater and keep the veggie as hot as you liked for no net energy cost... :)
> As the price of petrol fuel supplies slowly moves upward due to demand from> China and India, I foresee datacenters moving away from diesel generators as> backup power sources towards fuel cells/generators that can burn natural gas and hydrogen.Technically fuel cells don't burn the fuel; they rely on a chemical process that israther like a battery except that it relies on a continuous supply of fresh fuelto supply hydrogen atoms. The fuel cell has a catalyst which strips electronsoff the fuel, and those flowing electrons are electricity.Unfortunately, most fuel cells run very hot (600 C with molten carbonate) oruse noxious chemicals (sulphuric acid slurry). But a lot of work is being doneinto developing fuel cells that run at low temperatures and which are not sofussy about the fuel that you feed them. One company that has interestingcommercial products right now is Acumentrics:--Michael Dillon