FuelCell Energy to build Connecticut fuel-cell testbed for AI data centre power

FuelCell Energy said on 10 November 2026 that it will build a fuel-cell test facility at its manufacturing site in Connecticut as part of StabilityMax, a three-year project run by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), formerly the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with Argonne National Laboratory also taking part.

The project is to produce a way to test and model how fuel cells, batteries, power electronics and advanced controls behave together when they supply AI data centres, whose power draw, the company says, is rising fast and swinging sharply. NLR will build simulation models and load profiles that mimic how modern computing uses power, so FuelCell Energy's fuel cells can be tested under realistic conditions. Argonne will run cost and lifecycle analyses to find deployment approaches that make commercial sense.

Zhiwen Ma, NLR's principal investigator, said fuel cells sited next to data centres can answer their power needs quickly while easing the effect on the grid and on ratepayers, and that the project will help demonstrate this. Shankar Achanta, FuelCell Energy's chief product and technology officer, said the results will help the company refine its system designs and check how they perform in real operating conditions. The company says the project builds on its collaboration with Siemens, announced earlier in 2026, on a layered power design that combines technologies working over different timescales.