Modeling and control of a hydrogen-based green data center

Abstract

Data centers consume a large amount of energy, contributing to CO2 emissions, global warming, and resulting in significant electricity cost. To address these concerns, an increasing number of companies have considered building green data centers. The most abundant energy resource is solar; it is now a key player in the global energy transformation. Tidal energy has also received particular attention recently. The predictable characteristic of the resource makes the kinetic energy of tidal current an extremely competitive power resource compared to other commonly used renewable energies. For this purpose, a hybrid Tidal/Photovoltaic system is used for powering an MW scale green data center on a remote island. Green data centers are mainly dependent on renewable energies, which have intermittent nature and require a storage system capable of ensuring sustainable energy feeding. The proposed system consists of an MW scale proton exchange membrane electrolyzer and fuel cell. This system is associated with the LiFePO4 battery to cover the fast-electrical dynamics. In this paper, the system modeling is presented along with an initial proposal of control and energy management system to align the data center energy consumption with the renewable energy generated while respecting the different system constraints. The model is implemented in Matlab/Simulink platform where the simulation results exhibit the system performance under different operation conditions.