Data centers increasingly can be assets to the power system and their communities, responding to competitive forces, contracting with renewable energy resources, providing business-to-grid services, and innovating around efficiency.
With the rise in computing power and online access, data centers have become the industrial centers of the information age. These expansive facilities, with the largest exceeding 1 million square feet, house network infrastructure, computer processing power, and information in a climate-controlled environment. As a result, data centers are some of the highest energy intensive buildings in the commercial and industrial sectors, with electricity being the primary input to production. As data centers have proliferated, legislators, regulators, and utilities are monitoring the increased electricity they consume, warning that data center usage globally could reach significant portions of total production by 2025.
Fortunately, energy efficiency and the need to control costs have kept total energy consumption in check. Today, the German statistics office reports that Internet usage has increased 15-fold and there are 7.2 million data centers worldwide. However, according to the International Energy Agency, data center demand for electricity has decoupled from demand for data center services, flattening to around 1 percent of global electricity demand. Total electricity demand from data centers in the European Union is 2.7 percent of electricity demand and U.S. data centers consume around 2 percent of total electricity produced – the consumption of a small country, but far less than projected. This does not mean that energy consumption by data centers has leveled off indefinitely – the proliferation of the Internet of Things, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, and growing reliance on big data would challenge this assertion. To date, however, energy efficiency, innovation, and market incentives have limited data center demand for electricity.
The net result is a lesson in letting market-based incentives work. Going forward, even more innovation can be realized by rewarding efficiency, flexibility, and sustainability. Data centers already are supporting the clean energy economy, and they can play a more important role in grid reliability going forward. Policymakers and regulators can help by focusing on allowing data centers to access market price signals, participate in demand response programs, and realize energy efficiency incentives.
Learn more by reading the full article in Power Grid International.
