DESC: Type I: Minimizing Carbon Footprint by Co-designing Data Centers with Sustainable Power Grids

University Of California-Riverside, Riverside CA

Investigators

Abstract

Data centers currently contribute a significant percentage of the global greenhouse gas emissions, estimated to be on par with the airline industry. Many projections have this percentage increasing dramatically by 2030 due to an expected increased computational demand. A major driver of environmental sustainability efforts is the shift towards renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind energy. However, renewable energy sources are intermittent and extremely variable which poses a major challenge as power grids must maintain a balance between supply (from energy generation) and demand (from energy consumers). This project introduces and investigates a novel carbon metric, “Exogenous Carbon”, the capacity for data centers to reduce carbon footprint of the power grid by providing services to balance the power grid while increasing renewable energy utilization/generation. This project aims to (1) estimate fine-grain spatial-temporal carbon intensities and quantify exogenous carbon, (2) develop power-malleable data center run-time techniques to minimize carbon emissions from the sustainable power grid and maximize the benefit of exogenous carbon, and (3) develop data center design-time techniques to guide data center planning and placement, as well as co-design run-time optimization to minimize life-time carbon footprint. This project has a significant broader impact on industry and the scientific community. The developed runtime frameworks, management policies, and metrics/tools will help power grid operators and data centers of all sizes to realize environmental sustainability improvements, such as reducing carbon footprint, reducing energy consumption, and improving power grid stability to enable greater renewable energy penetration. This project also includes a significant educational component. The investigators will integrate the research results and tools into both undergraduate and graduate curricula, as well as recruit under-represented minorities and undergraduate students at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), an accredited Hispanic Serving Institution (OPEID-00131600), to help train students in the fundamentals of designing for environmental sustainability for future computing systems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.