Challenges and opportunities for the energy management of sustainable data centers in smart grids

Abstract

With the increase of cloud computing and internet services, data centers are emerging to satisfy the requirement, leading to incremental energy consumption demand and emissions of green house gases. Thus, integration of renewable energies with the traditional power grid is preferred to reduce the environmental impact and increase energy efficiency, which lead to a demand of energy management strategies to coordinate the energy demand and generation. In this paper, we review the challenges for the sustainable data centers in smart grids with regards to energy management strategies, integration with renewable energies and cyber-attacks and propose possible solutions. Through the analysis of the data centers from the perspective of both smart grids level and micro-grid level, the research challenges and potential research directions in the energy management of sustainable data centers have been discussed.