Real-Time Energy Management for Cloud Data Centers in Smart Microgrids

Cloud service providers are typically faced with three significant problems when running their cloud data centers, i.e., rising electricity bills, growing carbon footprints, and unexpected power outages. To mitigate these issues, running cloud data centers in smart microgrids (SMGs) is a good choice, since SMGs can enhance the energy efficiency, sustainability, and reliability of electrical services. Thus, in this paper, we investigate the problem of energy management for cloud data centers in SMGs. To be specific, we would minimize the time average expected energy cost (including electricity bill, battery depreciation cost, the total generation cost of conventional generators, and revenue loss due to the unfinished workloads) with the consideration of three practical factors, i.e., the ramping constraints of backup generators, the charging and discharging efficiency parameters of batteries, and two kinds of data center workloads. A stochastic programming is formulated by integrating the constraints associated with workload allocation, electricity buying/selling, battery management, backup generators, and power balancing. To solve the stochastic programming problem, an online algorithm is designed, and the algorithmic performance is analyzed. Simulation results show the advantages of the designed algorithm over other baselines.