How data centers can better manage energy use
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Close Caption: “There are two dimensions that data centers have to make decisions about,” Christopher Knittel says. “One is how much of their load in any one time period is flexible. And two, how many hours, plus or minus, can they move that computation?” Credits: Image: MIT News, iStock Previous image Next image The number of U.S.
data centers is growing, largely to power artificial intelligence programs. That has led to concern about the environmental consequences of data centers — and their impact on the energy grid itself. What will happen if scores of new data centers come online? A new study by MIT researchers indicates that the impact of data centers could vary significantly, depending on how their energy use is structured.
Specifically, if data centers move a significant portion of their energy consumption to non-peak hours, it might actually help lower average energy costs. The environmental impact, in terms of type of energy consumed, would differ by location, with some places likely seeing a greater buildout of renewables and others experiencing a relative increase in fossil fuel use. “The key with data centers is: How can we add them to the network without adding a lot to our peak usage?” says Christopher Knittel, an economist in the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the study. “One way for data centers to do that — to add to average usage but not the peak usage — is if they provide some grid flexibility during those high-cost periods.
And that’s what we’ve been interested in understanding.” Specifically, the paper finds that a flexible arrangement for data-center energy consumption, compared to an inflexible one, would produce cost savings of up to 5 percent in Texas, 4 percent in the Mid-Atlantic region, and 2 percent in the western U.S. To achieve that, data centers would have to move more than 20 percent of their consumption — sometimes more like 50 percent — to non-peak hours. The paper is titled “Flexible Data Centers Reduce Power System Costs But Can Increase Emissions,” and appears today in the journal iScience. The authors are Juan Ramon L.
Senga, a postdoc in MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; Shen Wang, a postdoc in MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research; and Knittel, who is the George P. Schultz Professor at MIT Sloan and the associate dean for climate and sustainability at MIT. The expansion of data centers has raised questions about additional stress for the U.S. grid, the global effects of increased fossil-fuel consumption, and the local environmental effects of data centers.
The current study examines the first two of these issues.
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