How a virtual power plant provides energy to your data center

Do you pay for electricity usage? What happens if you do so to support the power supply to local data centers?

Google Map is a new agreement to support the payment of the virtual power plant (VPP) in the largest transmission network in the United States. This agreement was signed with Voltus, a leading VPP and decentralized energy resource platform.

Voltus sets up a virtual power plant by grouping devices such as electric vehicles and smart thermostats. The customer pays the participation fee, and the company dials back the power at the time when the grid loads, or uses stored energy. Homeogle is responsible for its installation costs and additional capacity generated by the project will help you run data centers in that region.

This is one of the most specific examples so far that high-tech giants meet the energy demand for data centers using VPP. However, there is still a question about where this type of program can be and what the limit is.

Last year, I felt that everyone was talking about the flexibility of the data center. Duke University’s attentiond study found that if data centers agreed to reduce energy demand for about 40 hours a year, they could be able to online the entire data center (equivalent to about 100 gigawatts) without the need for a new power plant or transmission device.

The underlying reason is that our power transmission network is designed to assume the extreme heat of July night, which is not the average energy usage, but the absolute maximum, that is, everyone sprays the air conditioner to the gun, watch the Love Island and warms the popcorn in a microwave. If the data center does not supply a large amount of power in a stressful time, the power transmission network will be happy to support the data center throughout the year.

One of the questions still remain here is about incentives. How do I consent to the data center? After all, especially when the use of AI is more widely popular, the load is not so flexible. Model training can be easily delayed or changed, but customer demand has become more imminent. If you abandon your computing power, you may lose your revenue.

Regulations are one of the effective approaches here. In some suggestions in the United States, if you agree to reduce your demand when the grid is up to, you can run a new data center for years. In addition, the new laws of 、 require large-scale users to switch to backup power in an emergency or to suppress demand.

Another approach is to pay for data center operators to be flexible.

Voltus announced a new program to enable data centers to fund local grid flexibility in September. “Bring your own capacity” Google is the first customer to use this program.

In the new contract, Voltas pays to people who agree to participate in the virtual power plant. This plant becomes part of the PJM, a power net that covers most of the east coast of the United States. The company intends to aggregate up to 100 megawatts of decentralized energy resources per year. According to Voltus, this power plant will be running in 2027.

This is not the first time Google pursues flexibility. The company has an agreement that limits or shifts the energy demand of the U.S. power company and its own, so the capacity of the transmission network can be released. However, as the company pointed out in blog posts earlier this year, the flexibility of the data center is limited and not all facilities can reduce power demand.

“There is no only solution for expanding power grid capacity, and we continue to consider any choice, including many means to increase load flexibility,” said Michael Terele, Global Head of Advanced Energy Department, Google’s e-mail statement answered a written question.

I’m wondering about incentives again. These companies require flexible responses to households and businesses. Will they agree?

A recent study conducted in California surveyed local residents’ desire to participate in the charge of controlled electric vehicles. Basically, this program pays money to people who abandon control of theV charging time. This is another way to level power demand and reduce the burden on the grid.

Problems? There weren’t many people who registered. As there is no economic incentive, only 1% of管理 owners are registered in the management charge. For $40/month (approximately 15% of electricity charges), only 4.6%

This is different from the situation in which Google cooperates with Voltus and is different. It is worth noting that the company has not published the amount of money to pay to the participant. This is obviously a major decision to participate in this kind of project. )

However, this study indicates that even if you have a money, it is not necessarily a chance for people to abandon control of power demand. According to Garlap’s recent polls,アメリカ人 70% of the Americans are surely opposite AI data centers in their region.

Being flexible is theoretically sounds like a great idea, but these funded VPP may provide immediate routes to meet energy demands. However, as you move from ideas to implementation, it will be interesting to see if the trial works as intended.

This article is from MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter The Spark. Sign up here to receive your order on Wednesdays.

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