HnPower

AI data centres and new buildings go up in one to three years and then wait five to fifteen for a grid connection. HnPower builds solid oxide fuel cell systems that generate electricity on site from natural gas or hydrogen around the clock, with its own reformers that extract hydrogen from seven different fuels, and is scaling from building-sized units to 100 kW modules for data centres.

A facility can be built faster than the grid can reach it. Data centres, apartment blocks and offices now routinely wait years for a connection, and the alternatives are a gas turbine that takes years of its own to permit and build, or renewables that cannot promise power at three in the morning. A solid oxide fuel cell converts the chemical energy in a fuel straight into electricity, with no combustion, at roughly twice the electrical efficiency of a small turbine, and it fits in a plant room.

HnPower has built these systems in Korea since 2009. Its building-sized units carry KS certification and run in apartment complexes, offices and schools, each one remotely monitored from a control room in Daejeon. The same platform is now being scaled into 100 kW modules that stack up to the one to five megawatts an AI data centre needs on site, a marine version is in development with Korean shipbuilders, and its own fuel processors can reform hydrogen from natural gas, methanol, diesel and other fuels. The company is in Silicon Valley looking for a US data-centre operator to host its first launch site.