Reliability Assessment of Hydrogen-Powered Energy System in Internet Data Centers

With the rapid growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions in Internet data centers (IDCs), the green and low-carbon development of electricity consumption in IDCs is critical. Hydrogen fuel cells are highly efficient and low-carbon, making them a promising option for IDCs' energy supply. However, integrating fuel cells introduces complexities in the relationships among IDC workloads, electricity, cooling, and heating, making the reliability assessment of IDC with hydrogen-powered energy system (HPES) more challenging. This paper develops an accurate IDC operation model that captures these complex dynamics. Moreover, we propose a Monte Carlo simulation method (MCSM) based on Gaussian distribution sampling (GDS) and a two-state failure model (TFM) to describe the randomness of workloads and component states, enabling a comprehensive reliability assessment. Numerical results indicate that HPES demonstrates high reliability and are economically advantageous when the price of hydrogen is below a certain threshold.