ECL Announces 35MW Hybrid-Power Data Center in California, Leveraging Hydrogen for AI Demand
April 22, 2026
ECL, a US data center operator, has unveiled plans for a 35-megawatt facility in Santa Clara, California, marking a significant step in the industry's search for reliable and sustainable power solutions to fuel the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. The project underscores a critical shift as data center operators grapple with strained electrical grids and seek alternatives to ensure capacity keeps pace with AI-driven demand.
The new facility, named CSC-1, will combine power from the traditional grid and natural gas with the company's proprietary behind-the-meter hydrogen power blocks. This FlexGrid architecture is designed to provide what ECL terms "always-on, grid-independent operation." The first phase of development will offer 2.5MW of IT capacity, supporting high-density racks ranging from 75kW to 270kW. By integrating hydrogen generation on-site, ECL aims to help customers bypass lengthy grid interconnection queues, a major bottleneck for rapid deployment.
ECL has been a pioneer in this space, already operating a 1MW hydrogen-powered data center, MV-1, at its Mountain View headquarters, with AI cloud firm Lambda as a known customer. For the Santa Clara site, the company projects a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of less than 1.15, noting that by-product water from hydrogen generation can be utilized in the cooling system, enhancing overall efficiency.
"A 35MW facility delivered in Santa Clara in under a year would have been unthinkable through traditional grid-connected development," said Yuval Bachar, co-founder and CEO of ECL. "Every major AI operator in the Bay Area is staring at the same math, with years-long interconnection queues pitted against AI deployment needs that are growing by the minute. By phasing growth through modular power blocks, ECL matches infrastructure deployment to the actual pace of AI demand rather than forcing customers to overbuild or wait. This site demonstrates that power architecture itself can become the enabling layer for AI scale rather than the constraint."
The initiative highlights the potential of hydrogen as a low-carbon alternative that could ease grid pressure. However, the industry still faces challenges related to hydrogen production, storage, and the lack of a widespread pipeline network in the US. ECL has previously outlined ambitions for a much larger 1-gigawatt hydrogen-powered campus in Texas, though the current status of that project remains unclear. The Santa Clara development represents a tangible move toward making modular, hybrid-power data centers a viable model for the AI era.
Source: datacenterdynamics
