Distribution and Management of Datacenter Load Decoupling

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lin, Liuzixuan, Chien, Andrew A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914153000599552
author Lin, Liuzixuan
Chien, Andrew A.
author_facet Lin, Liuzixuan
Chien, Andrew A.
contents The exploding power consumption of AI and cloud datacenters (DCs) intensifies the long-standing concerns about their carbon footprint, especially because DCs' need for constant power clashes with volatile renewable generation needed for grid decarbonization. DC flexibility (a.k.a. load adaptation) is a key to reducing DC carbon emissions by improving grid renewable absorption. DC flexibility can be created, without disturbing datacenter capacity by decoupling a datacenter's power capacity and grid load with a collection of energy resources. Because decoupling can be costly, we study how to best distribute and manage decoupling to maximize benefits for all. Key considerations include site variation and datacenter-grid cooperation. We first define and compute the power and energy needs of datacenter load decoupling, and then we evaluate designed distribution and management approaches. Evaluation shows that optimized distribution can deliver >98% of the potential grid carbon reduction with 70% of the total decoupling need. For management, DC-grid cooperation (2-way sharing and control vs. 1-way info sharing) enables 1.4x grid carbon reduction. Finally, we show that decoupling may be economically viable, as on average datacenters can get power cost and carbon emissions benefits greater than their local costs of decoupling. However, skew across sites suggests grid intervention may be required.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_08936
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Distribution and Management of Datacenter Load Decoupling
Lin, Liuzixuan
Chien, Andrew A.
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Systems and Control
The exploding power consumption of AI and cloud datacenters (DCs) intensifies the long-standing concerns about their carbon footprint, especially because DCs' need for constant power clashes with volatile renewable generation needed for grid decarbonization. DC flexibility (a.k.a. load adaptation) is a key to reducing DC carbon emissions by improving grid renewable absorption. DC flexibility can be created, without disturbing datacenter capacity by decoupling a datacenter's power capacity and grid load with a collection of energy resources. Because decoupling can be costly, we study how to best distribute and manage decoupling to maximize benefits for all. Key considerations include site variation and datacenter-grid cooperation. We first define and compute the power and energy needs of datacenter load decoupling, and then we evaluate designed distribution and management approaches. Evaluation shows that optimized distribution can deliver >98% of the potential grid carbon reduction with 70% of the total decoupling need. For management, DC-grid cooperation (2-way sharing and control vs. 1-way info sharing) enables 1.4x grid carbon reduction. Finally, we show that decoupling may be economically viable, as on average datacenters can get power cost and carbon emissions benefits greater than their local costs of decoupling. However, skew across sites suggests grid intervention may be required.
title Distribution and Management of Datacenter Load Decoupling
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08936