Green Data Centres integration in smart grids: New frontiers for ancillary service provision

- Grids issues about RES effects and Data Centre consumption increase are studied.
- Green Data Centres providing ancillary services to smart grid are studied.
- A real Green Data Centre with a relative dynamic system control is simulated.
- A Data Centre participation in secondary frequency regulation is proposed.
- A Data Centre impact during grid under frequency transients is studied.

The paper presents a study, conceived within the GEYSER FP7 co-funded European research project, on the ancillary services that Green Data Centres (GDCs) can provide, focusing, in particular, on spinning reserve.More in detail, the main contribution of the paper is to show how GDCs can be involved in the secondary frequency regulation process of a smart distribution grid, for contrasting the disturbing effects of unexpected variation of the energy production.With this aim, a real data centre, owned by Engineering S.p.A., is simulated as connected to the Medium Voltage IEEE 14-bus test grid where some RES-based generators are supposed to exist.Simulations are carried out in order to evaluate the impact of power management actions to be executed by the data centre during under-frequency transients, due to an event of renewable energy facilities power production decrease. During this event, the effects of the spinning reserve provided by the data centre are deeply analysed.