Haffner Energy has launched an energy offering for data centres, with the first commercial proposals already being prepared.
The system is designed to provide high electrical capacity, reduce reliance on the grid, lower carbon emissions and manage water use.
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The offering uses the company’s CORE100 modular architecture and its C-iB variant, which is intended for installations made up of multiple modules.
Projects could provide tens of megawatts of capacity or more, depending on customer requirements, and could be expanded as computing capacity grows.
The system would generate renewable, dispatchable electricity from local residual biomass.
It could operate alongside the grid and reduce the amount of power a data centre needs to draw from it, potentially allowing development before grid upgrades for the site’s full requirements are completed.
Haffner Energy said a configuration of 10 modules, including two held in reserve, could be supported by a limited natural gas supply during exceptional periods when the biomass units cannot provide the required output.
This arrangement is designed to deliver availability above 99.995%, while natural gas would represent less than 0.1% of primary energy. Modules could also be maintained in sequence while others remain operational.
Heat produced during electricity generation would be recovered through a combined cycle, giving overall electrical efficiency of about 55% of the energy contained in the syngas.
The recovered heat would also power lithium bromide chillers, producing chilled water at approximately 4°C from heat available at around 90°C.
Haffner Energy said this could meet cooling requirements without using electricity and water for that purpose, while condensate recovered from biomass could reduce net water needs.
Haffner Energy chairman and CEO Philippe Haffner said: “Data centres are an especially attractive opportunity for Haffner Energy, precisely because our value proposition is so differentiated.
“A single project can call for more than 10 modules, with each module integrated into a full-service data centre offering generating about €6m in revenue — nearly three times what a module used solely for syngas production would bring in.
“That additional revenue doesn’t require a proportional increase in our industrial capacity, since some of the complementary equipment is supplied by specialised partners. Our offering thus addresses the market’s three key requirements: availability, speed of deployment, and decarbonisation.”
