Did you know 60 google searches use the same energy as boiling a pot of tea?
Did you know data centers use 2% of the electricity produced in the US?
Prof. McLarty recently spoke at a conference co-hosted by Microsoft and UW focused on the application of SOFC in data centers. The conference inspired a lot of new thinking about the form factor of SOFC and transitioning from a separate entity into an integrated component of a larger system. That system may be a data center or a coffee shop. A semi-truck or a cruise ship. The possibilities are endless. The meeting was especially interesting for being driven by the possible end-customer rather than the technology developer. It gave all the SOFC researchers in the room some new ideas on what features of the technology are valuable, and how systems might be designed for the broadest set of applications. Splitting the system into re-configurable modules with plug-and-play connectivity would allow fast scaling from a couple kW to many hundreds. Click here for Prof. McLarty’s presentation.