Datacenter Peak Power Management with Energy Storage Devices

Datacenters are warehouse-scale computing buildings that require high amounts of power. This results in prohibitively high electricity costs, increasing operational costs. Recently, researchers proposed using energy storage devices (ESDs) in datacenters to reduce their maximum power demand. ESDs enable datacenters to set smaller power budgets because they can provide additional energy when the demand is expected to be higher than this budget. This paper leverages a detailed survey of previous studies and analyzes the economical feasibility of this methodology from three different perspectives. We first compare different ESDs based on their ability to manage datacenter peak power. Then, we demonstrate that peak shaving benefits might differ due to datacenter usage and ownership. Finally, we analyze the option where datacenters participate in electric utility programs with their ESDs to obtain additional savings.