Distributed Economic Dispatch in Power Networks Incorporating Data Center Flexibility

We consider Data Centers (DCs) as flexible loads that can alter their power consumption to alleviate congestion in the electric power network. We model DCs using a queuing-theoretic view and we form a Quality of Service (QoS)-based cost function that signifies how well a DC can carry out its workload given an amount of active servers. We integrate DCs in a centralized economic dispatch problem that determines, apart from power generation, DC workload shifting and server utilization, while respecting transmission line constraints. We further present a tractable decentralized formulation obtained via Lagrangian decomposition, which we solve using a dual gradient ascent algorithm. Experimental results on a standard power network explore the system-wide benefits of DC flexibility in “coupled” data and power networks, emphasizing on the trade-offs between the DC location, QoS, and efficiency.