Verizon Operates the Largest Fuel Cell Site of Its Kind in the U.S.
In 2008, Verizon earned the federal government's prestigious Energy Star Award for operating the nation's largest fuel cell site of its kind, an environmentally friendly call-switching center and office building in Garden City, N.Y.
In operation since 2005, the facility uses seven fuel cells that help reduce dependence on commercial electric power and provide another layer of network reliability in the event of natural disasters, power outages and periods of peak commercial power demands.
Verizon's Garden City project is unique because the existing commercial power grid, the new fuel cells and existing Verizon backup power work together to meet the facility's operational needs. Natural gas is piped in from the local gas company, National Grid, to obtain the hydrogen atoms for the chemical process. The natural gas is not burned. Instead, hydrogen atoms are detached from the gas as it is fed into each of the seven cells, and then combined with oxygen atoms from the air to generate direct current electrical power.
- Each of the seven fuel cells is capable of generating 200 kilowatts of electrical power per hour, enough to supply the energy needs of about 400 single-family households.
- This system provides as much as 80 percent of the facility's power load when all seven fuel cells are activated.
Heat and water are then removed from each cell, and direct current is converted to alternating-current electricity for use in the building. Waste heat created by the fuel cells generates 75 percent of the energy required to heat the facility and one-third required for cooling.
By using fuel cells at this site, Verizon is eliminating some 11.1 million pounds of carbon dioxide a year that would have been emitted into the atmosphere by a similar-sized fossil-fuel-based power plant.
Verizon also uses fuel cells on a smaller scale to provide emergency backup power in telephone switching offices in Missouri, New York, Texas and Washington.
