Energy Efficient Data Centers for On-Demand Cloud Services
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Abstract
The primary objective of the Data Centers (DCs) is to provide in-time services to the cloud customers. For in-time services, DCs required an uninterruptable power supply at low cost. The DCs’ power supply is directly linked with the stability and steady-state performance of the power system under faults and disturbances. Smart Grids (SGs) also known as the next generation power systems utilize communication and information technology to optimize power generation, distribution, and consumption. Therefore, it is beneficial to run DCs under SG environment. We present a thorough study of the wide area smart grid architecture, design, network, and control. The goal was to familiarize with the smart grid operation, monitoring, and control. We analyze different control mechanisms proposed in the past to study the behavior of the wide area smart grid symmetric and asymmetric grid faults conditions. The Study of the SG architecture was a first step to design power management and energy cost reduction models for the DC running under SGs. At first, we present a Power Management Model (PMM) for the DCs to estimate energy consumption cost. The PMM is a comprehensive model that considers many important quantities into account, such as DC power consumption, data center battery bank charging/discharging, backup generation operation during power outages, and power transactions between the main grid and the SG. Second, renewable energy, such as wind energy is integrated with the SG to minimize DC energy consumption cost. Third, forecasting algorithms are introduced in the PMM to predict DC power consumption, wind energy generation, and main grid power availability for the SG. The forecasting algorithms are employed for day-ahead and week-ahead prediction horizons. The purpose of the forecasting algorithms is to manage power generation and consumption, and reduce energy prices. Fourth, we formulate chargeback model for the DC customers to calculate on-demand cloud services cost. The DC energy consumption cost estimated through PMM is integrated with the other operational and capital expenditures to calculate per server utilization cost for the DC customers. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed models is evaluated on real-world data sets.