Digital infrastructure company Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQIX) today announced the opening of its first Co-Innovation Facility (CIF), located in its DC15 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center at the Equinix Ashburn Campus in the Washington, D.C. area.

A component of Equinix’s Data Center of the Future initiative, the CIF is a new capability that enables partners to work with Equinix on trialing and developing innovations. These innovations, such as identifying a path to clean hydrogen-enabled fuel cells or deploying more capable battery solutions, will be used to help define the future of sustainable digital infrastructure and services globally.

Sustainable innovations, including liquid cooling, high-density cooling, intelligent power management and on-site prime power generation, will be incubated in the CIF in partnership with leading data center technology innovators including Bloom Energy, ZutaCore, Virtual Power Systems (VPS) and Natron.

In collaboration with Equinix, these partners will test core and edge technologies with a focus on proving reliability, efficiency and cost to build. These include:

• Generator-less and UPS-less Data Centers (Bloom Energy) – Utilizing on-site solid oxide fuel cells enables the data center to generate redundant cleaner energy on-grid, and potentially eliminates the need for fossil fuel-powered generators and power-consuming Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems.
• High-Density Liquid Cooling (ZutaCore) – Highly efficient, direct-on-chip, waterless, two-phase liquid cooled rack systems, capable of cooling upwards of 100 kW per rack in a light, compact design. Eliminates risk of IT meltdown, minimizes use of scarce resources including energy, land, construction and water, and dramatically shrinks the data center footprint.
• Software-Defined Power (VPS) with cabinet-mounted Battery Energy Storage (Natron Energy) – Cabinet power management and battery energy storage system manages power draw and minimizes power stranding to near zero percent, leading to a potential 30-50% improvement of power efficiency.

Equinix’s data center campus in Ashburn, VA—home to the largest internet peering point in North America and one of the largest in the world—is a strategic communications hub for the eastern U.S. and a major gateway to Europe. The campus is the single most-dense interconnection hub in the U.S., providing proximity to financial enterprises, government, content and digital media services, global networks and cloud service providers.