Mapping Data Centre Business Types with Power Management Strategies to Identify Demand Response Candidates

Abstract

Data centres are key to a future energy system with a high share of intermittent renewable energy sources. They form the cloud that enables a modern life-style and cyber-physical based production; however, fulfilling these tasks makes them the fastest growing component of IT power demand. In the future energy system the flexibility of consumers' power demand will be a necessary response to the growing intermittency of power supply. Therefore, data centres as big consumers become one target power consumer group to integrate their flexibility potential into daily business operation. Research has seen this necessity for some years and developed technical strategies to control the power profile of a data centre, identifying a huge demand response potential. To date, however, hardly any data centre offers their flexbility to the power market. The reasons for the gap between the technical potential and realized valorization of a data centre's power flexibility are manifold. This paper aims at analysing this gap from a business viewpoint: Which data centre types do generally have customer contracts allowing for the necessary power flexibility? And to which degree do data centres have the necessary control over their power profile? In order to approach this set of questions, in a first step, typologies of data centres and of power saving strategies are created. Then data centre types are mapped with suitable power management strategies, and finally the results of this mapping process are discussed.