Mitigating Curtailment and Carbon Emissions through Load Migration between Data Centers

Abstract

Summary As the share of variable renewable energy (VRE) grows in the electric grid, so does the risk of curtailment. While energy storage and hydrogen production have been proposed as solutions to the curtailment problem, they often pose technological and economic challenges. Here, we analyze the potential of data center load migration for mitigating curtailment and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using historical hourly electricity generation, curtailment, and typical data center server utilization data, we simulate the effect of migrating data center workloads from the fossil-fuel-heavy PJM to the renewable-heavy CAISO. The results show that load migration within the existing data center capacity during the curtailment hours in CAISO has the potential to reduce 113–239 KtCO2e per year of GHG emissions and absorb up to 62% of the total curtailment with negative abatement costs in 2019. Our study demonstrates the overlooked role that data centers can play for VRE integration and GHG emissions mitigation.