GreenDataNet intends to design, validate and demonstrate a system-level optimization solution allowing a network of urban data centers to collectively improve their energy and environmental performance, and act as a resource for smart grids.
Renewable, low-carbon energy accounts for an ever-greater share of electrical energy production. It is helping push wholesale electricity prices down, and could one day lead to big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
But the fear is that the growth of solar and wind power is destabilising the grid, and may lead to blackouts or brownouts.
What is needed are ways to optimize, at a grid-level, energy use that rewards low-carbon energy without reducing reliability and imposing undue and unnecessary costs.
At the highest level, the Project will do this by aggregating data from multiple data centers in a smart grid, and controlling IT loads by moving virtual machines according to power grid availability and cost, local energy storage level, and availability of renewable power.