Volume 4: Innovative Solutions for Energy Transitions: Part III

Datacenters as Prosumers in Urban Energy System: A Review Pei Huang, Xingxing Zhang* , Isabelle Löfgren, Mats Rönnelid, Jan Fahlen, Dan Andersson, Mikael Svanfeldt

Abstract

As a large energy prosumer in the urban energy systems, on the one hand, datacenters consume a large amount of electricity to ensure the IT facilities and ancillary power supply and cooling systems work properly; on the other hand, datacenters produce a large amount of waste heat due to the high heat dissipation rates of the IT facilities. To date, a systematic review of datacenters from the perspective of energy prosumers, which considers both integration of the upstream green energy supply and downstream waste heat reuse, is still lacking. This study fills in this gap and provides such a review. By providing a full picture of datacenters in the urban energy systems, this study aims to search new opportunities for improving datacenter overall energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions

Keywords Data center, review, urban energy system, renewable/green energy, waste heat, energy efficiency