Energy Credits Auction Mechanism for Enhancing the Grid’s Upward Flexibility Using Datacenters

Autor: Marc St-Hilaire, Ahmed Abada
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: EuCNC
DOI: 10.1109/eucnc48522.2020.9200929
Popis: Since modern utility grids lack large-scale energy storage capabilities, their supply and demand levels must always be balanced to maintain a reliable operation. This requirement has traditionally been fulfilled through several existing techniques. However, recent interests in greening the utility grids require using more renewable energy sources, which makes the balancing task more challenging due to the unpredictability of such sources. This necessitates enhancing the grid’s flexibility (energy balancing capabilities) to ensure reliable grid operation. In this work, we propose a new energy auctioning mechanism that enhances the grid’s upward flexibility by using cloud datacenters as managed loads to quickly balance excess renewable energy. The auction process increases the energy consumption at a certain datacenter by incentivizing workload migrations to it in order to consume the excess energy. We present the formulation of our system model, introduce the used auction mechanism and show through simulation that it achieves efficient grid balancing, generates revenue on the sale of the excess energy and guarantees positive utility for all auction participants.
Databáze: OpenAIRE