Adapting Datacenter Capacity for Greener Datacenters and Grid

Cloud providers are adapting datacenter (DC) capacity to reduce carbon emissions. With hyperscale datacenters exceeding 100 MW individually, and in some grids exceeding 15% of power load, DC adaptation is large enough to harm power grid dynamics, increasing carbon emissions, power prices, or reduce grid reliability. To avoid harm, we explore coordination of DC capacity change varying scope in space and time. In space, coordination scope spans a single datacenter, a group of datacenters, and datacenters with the grid. In time, scope ranges from online to day-ahead. We also consider what DC and grid information is used (e.g. real-time and day-ahead average carbon, power price, and compute backlog). For example, in our proposed PlanShare scheme, each datacenter uses day-ahead information to create a capacity plan and shares it, allowing global grid optimization (over all loads, over entire day). We evaluate DC carbon emissions reduction. Results show that local coordination scope fails to reduce carbon emissions significantly (3.2%--5.4% reduction). Expanding coordination scope to a set of datacenters improves slightly (4.9%--7.3%). PlanShare, with grid-wide coordination and full-day capacity planning, performs the best. PlanShare reduces DC emissions by 11.6%--12.6%, 1.56x--1.26x better than the best local, online approach's results. PlanShare also achieves lower cost. We expect these advantages to increase as renewable generation in power grids increases. Further, a known full-day DC capacity plan provides a stable target for DC resource management.Comment: Published at e-Energy '23: Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Future Energy System

Data Transmission and Energy Efficient Internet Data Centers

The internet is a marvel of human accomplishment and a feat of technological engineering, which allows nearly instantaneous communication across the globe-an act once considered the stuff of science fiction. It has been lauded for its environmental benefits, such as reducing paper production and waste, but, as with any great accomplishment, there are unintended consequences. The increased proliferation of electronic devices to access the internet and the exponential advancement of those devices results in large amounts of electronic waste-a problem in its own right. Compounding the issue, for all of those internet-enabled devices to work, they must rely on the backbone of the internet: data servers. Data servers are connected by the thousands within data centers, and these centers must continuously draw electricity from the national electric grid to keep up with internet user demand. This overwhelming amount of energy and electricity consumption creates huge electricity bills for U.S. companies and produces millions of metric tons of toxic carbon emissions annually. This Comment addresses the impacts of increased energy consumption by internet data centers and suggests a regulatory solution to make those data centers more energy efficient. Within the United States, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the best-suited agency to address the energy efficiency of the internet. Under the Federal Power Act-and consistent with the Supreme Court\u27s interpretation of the Act\u27s language in New York v. FERC and FERC v. Electric Power Supply Ass\u27n-FERC has the authority to mandate efficiency standards for internet data centers because those data centers transmit electric energy in interstate commerce and may be considered transmission facilities. Overall, this Comment aims to suggest a regulatory means by which the United States can reduce its energy consumption, thereby harmonizing environmental and business concerns to allow for sustainable economic growth

Carbon Responder: Coordinating Demand Response for the Datacenter Fleet

The increasing integration of renewable energy sources results in fluctuations in carbon intensity throughout the day. To mitigate their carbon footprint, datacenters can implement demand response (DR) by adjusting their load based on grid signals. However, this presents challenges for private datacenters with diverse workloads and services. One of the key challenges is efficiently and fairly allocating power curtailment across different workloads. In response to these challenges, we propose the Carbon Responder framework. The Carbon Responder framework aims to reduce the carbon footprint of heterogeneous workloads in datacenters by modulating their power usage. Unlike previous studies, Carbon Responder considers both online and batch workloads with different service level objectives and develops accurate performance models to achieve performance-aware power allocation. The framework supports three alternative policies: Efficient DR, Fair and Centralized DR, and Fair and Decentralized DR. We evaluate Carbon Responder polices using production workload traces from a private hyperscale datacenter. Our experimental results demonstrate that the efficient Carbon Responder policy reduces the carbon footprint by around 2x as much compared to baseline approaches adapted from existing methods. The fair Carbon Responder policies distribute the performance penalties and carbon reduction responsibility fairly among workloads

Contribution à la conception de la chaîne logistique verte en boucle fermée

Typiquement, la chaîne logistique verte réfère à un réseau logistique en boucle fermée, intégrant la logistique inverse et la chaîne logistique classique. Or, dans la pratique, les contraintes associées aux activités de la logistique inverse rendent cette intégration une tâche difficile et mettent en risque la durabilité économique de tout le réseau. Afin d'améliorer la durabilité économique de la chaîne logistique verte, cette thèse développe de nouvelles approches d’aide à la conception de réseau logistique en boucle fermée qui permettent l’amélioration du profit total tout en respectant les contraintes potentielles du réseau. Cette thèse a contribué à l’avancement de la recherche par deux articles de revue avec comité de lecture et trois articles de conférence avec comité de lecture. Le chapitre 2 présente une revue compréhensive de la littérature concernant la récupération de la valeur dans la chaîne logistique inverse et les modèles mathématiques de conception de la chaîne logistique en boucle fermée. Le chapitre 3 développe une approche basée sur la programmation non-linéaire en nombres entiers mixtes, supporte la conception d’un réseau logistique intégré de fabrication-remise à neuf dans lequel le détaillant est à la fois distributeur de produits neufs et fournisseur de produits en fin de vie. Cette approche considère la colocalisation des installations en tant que décision stratégique qui offre une grande économie d’échelle. Puisque la viabilité des réseaux logistiques en boucle fermée dépend fortement de la sélection de meilleures alternatives de traitement de produits en fin de vie, le chapitre 4 met en évidence la criticité de telles décisions et propose une approche basée sur la programmation linaire en nombres entiers mixtes pour l’optimisation du réseau logistique en boucle fermée avec plusieurs alternatives de traitement des produits en fin de vie. Typically, green supply chain refers to a closed-loop logistics network, incorporating reverse logistics and regular supply chain. However, in practice, the constraints associated with reverse logistics activities make this integration a difficult task, and put the economic sustainability of the network at risk. In order to improve the economic sustainability of the green supply chain, this thesis develops new approaches that aim at helping logistics network design closed loop improve the total profit while respecting the potential constraints of the network. This thesis has contributed to the advancement of research with two peer-reviewed articles and three refereed conference proceedings. Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive literature review regarding the value recovery in the reverse supply chain, as well as mathematical closed-loop supply chain network design models. Chapter 3 develops an approach based on non-linear programming mixed integers, aiming at designing an integrated manufacturing-remanufacturing logistics network, in which the retailer is both a distributor of new products and a supplier of end-of-life products. This approach considers the co-location of facilities as a strategic decision that offers great economy of scale. Since the closed-loop logistics network viability depends strongly on the selection of the best end-of-life product recovery alternative, chapter 4 highlights the criticality of such decision, and proposes a linear mixed integer programming-based approach to optimize a closed-loop logistics network with several recovery alternatives

Chapter Globally Optimised Energy-Efficient Data Centres

A great deal of energy in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems can be wasted by software, regardless of how energy-efficient the underlying hardware is. To avoid such waste, programmers need to understand the energy consumption of programs during the development process rather than waiting to measure energy after deployment. Such understanding is hindered by the large conceptual gap from hardware, where energy is consumed, to high-level languages and programming abstractions. The approaches described in this chapter involve two main topics: energy modelling and energy analysis. The purpose of modelling is to attribute energy values to programming constructs, whether at the level of machine instructions, intermediate code or source code. Energy analysis involves inferring the energy consumption of a program from the program semantics along with an energy model. Finally, the chapter discusses how energy analysis and modelling techniques can be incorporated in software engineering tools, including existing compilers, to assist the energy-aware programmer to optimise the energy consumption of code

Globally Optimised Energy-Efficient Data Centres

Data centres are part of today\u27s critical information and communication infrastructure, and the majority of business transactions as well as much of our digital life now depend on them. At the same time, data centres are large primary energy consumers, with energy consumed by IT and server room air conditioning equipment and also by general building facilities. In many data centres, IT equipment energy and cooling energy requirements are not always coordinated, so energy consumption is not optimised. Most data centres lack an integrated energy management system that jointly optimises and controls all its energy consuming equipments in order to reduce energy consumption and increase the usage of local renewable energy sources. In this chapter, the authors discuss the challenges of coordinated energy management in data centres and present a novel scalable, integrated energy management system architecture for data centre wide optimisation. A prototype of the system has been implemented, including joint workload and thermal management algorithms. The control algorithms are evaluated in an accurate simulation‐based model of a real data centre. Results show significant energy savings potential, in some cases up to 40%, by integrating workload and thermal management

University satellite institutes as exogenous facilitators of technology transfer ecosystem development

Universities can contribute to knowledge-based regional development not only in their home region but also in other regions. In a number of countries, universities have established university satellite institutes in additional (host) regions to promote research and technology transfer there. We investigate the role of university satellite institutes in the industrial development of regions, which, albeit not economically marginal, suffer from a weak knowledge infrastructure, limited absorptive capacities for external knowledge in the business sector and hence a low degree of attractiveness for non-local knowledge actors. Despite policy recommendations in favor of establishing satellite institutes, there has only been limited empirical research on this phenomenon, particularly concerning technology transfer ecosystem development. To fill this gap, we provide an exploratory case study of university satellite institutes in the Pearl River Delta of China’s Guangdong province. We show how such institutes can be successful in facilitating the development of their host region’s technology transfer ecosystems and demonstrate why they should be conceptually included in our existing understanding of third mission activities. Our research centers on the interplay of geographical proximity and non-spatial, organized proximity in the development of interregional knowledge bridges and entrepreneurial opportunities. We argue that the university’s geographical proximity is only successful if the satellite institute, by facilitating organized proximity, promotes the geographical proximity of further knowledge actors, hereby propelling ecosystem development. © 2021, The Author(s)