Renewable Energy in Data Centers: The Dilemma of Electrical Grid Dependency and Autonomy Costs

Integrating larger shares of renewables in data centers' electrical mix is mandatory to reduce their carbon footprint. However, as they are intermittent and fluctuating, renewable energies alone cannot provide a 24/7 supply and should be combined with a secondary source. Finding the optimal inf...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on sustainable computing 2024-05, Vol.9 (3), p.315-328
Main Authors: Gnibga, Wedan Emmanuel, Blavette, Anne, Orgerie, Anne-Cecile
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alternative energy sources
Autonomy
Batteries
carbon-neutral computing
Computer centers
Computer Science
Configurations
Cost analysis
Costs
Data centers
Distributed generation
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Electric power grids
Electric power systems
Electricity
energy storage
Green products
Hydrogen storage
Infrastructure
optimal sizing
Optimization
Production
Renewable energy sources
Renewable resources
Storage systems
Sustainable data centers
Task analysis
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Summary:Integrating larger shares of renewables in data centers' electrical mix is mandatory to reduce their carbon footprint. However, as they are intermittent and fluctuating, renewable energies alone cannot provide a 24/7 supply and should be combined with a secondary source. Finding the optimal infrastructure configuration for both renewable production and financial costs remains difficult. In this article, we examine three scenarios with on-site renewable energy sources combined respectively with the electrical grid, batteries alone and batteries with hydrogen storage systems. The objectives are first, to size optimally the electric infrastructure using combinations of standard microgrids approaches, second to quantify the level of grid utilization when data centers consume/ export electricity from/to the grid, to determine the level of effort required from the grid operator, and finally to analyze the cost of 100% autonomy provided by the battery-based configurations and to discuss their economical viability. Our results show that in the grid-dependent mode, 63.1% of the generated electricity has to be injected into the grid and retrieved later. In the autonomous configurations, the cheapest one including hydrogen storage leads to a unit cost significantly more expensive than the electricity supplied from a national power system in many countries.
ISSN:2377-3782
2377-3782
2377-3790
DOI:10.1109/TSUSC.2023.3307790