Potential of energy saving in a data center - application of an agent-based modelling

Conv entional approaches for modelling energy consumption for data center are limited to deal with the randomness, emergence and interdependence in energy systems. To fill the gap, an agent-based method was proposed and implemented to simulate the electricity consumption of a data center and to explore the potential of energy saving. The study found that a large amount of energy can be saved by dynamically operating the cooling load according to the practical load of the servers, namely 13% of the total energy consumption can be saved in the dynamic energy saving case (DESC) and 17% in the enhanced dynamic energy saving case (EDESC). The power usage effectiveness (PUE) of the data center can decrease from 1.71 in the original situation to 1.49 in the DESC and 1.42 in the EDESC. By contrast, the frequency of data backup has a heavy impact on the electricity consumption of the data center, while the frequency of computing tasks do not. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.