National and regional implications of internet data center growth in the US

Abstract

The electricity consumption of data center hosting facilities (also known as server farms or server hotels) is a growing concern to utility demand forecasters, data center facility managers, energy analysts and policy makers. Combining estimates of US computer room floor space for hosting facilities with total computer room power density, we found that these US data centers in the aggregate required less than 500 MW of power in 2000, and used only about 0.12% of the electricity consumed nationwide in that year. In this paper, our order-of-magnitude estimate suggests that energy demands of these facilities do not represent an enormous new burden on the electricity industry as a whole. The fact that these facilities tend to be concentrated in certain areas, however, may mean that there will be significant regional electricity demands in some parts of the country. If combined heat and power (CHP) technologies were introduced to data center facilities on a large scale, initial calculations indicate that these facilities might even become net contributors of power to the electric grid.