Balancing mechanisms assure grid stability. Especially well-suited for balancing purposes are large-scale storage facilities (SFs). However, the potential for these is in major parts set by geographic realities. On a transnational level, offering that potential to regions in need of balancing power (BP) does not often appear to be economically viable - an issue that is frequently related to the construction of power lines. Thus, in this article, we illustrate an early version of a design artifact giving remote balancing mechanisms access to a local BP market without deploying power lines: utilization of data centers (DCs) is typically very low (30-40%) representing a cheap source of demand flexibility. We thus let one DC participate in an existing BP market while tying a second to a remote balancing mechanism. By doing so, the design artifact enables both load and BP to flow seamlessly between distinct power markets contributing to grid stability and efficient utilization of balancing mechanisms. Within this extended summary, we perform a preliminary evaluation of the design artifact based on real-world data.
Demand-side flexibility (DSF) in the electricity grid has become an active research area in recent years. While temporal flexibility (e.g. load shedding, load shifting) is already discussed intensively in literature, spatial load migration still is an under-researched type of DSF. Spatial load migration allows us to instantly migrate power-consuming activities among different locations. Data centers (DCs) are power-intensive and process information goods. Since information goods are easily transferable through communication networks, power-intensive processing of information goods is not necessarily tied to a specific location. Consequently, geographically distributed DCs inherit—in theory—a considerable potential to globally migrate load. We analyze the economics of spatially migrating load to provide balancing power using geographically distributed DCs. We assure that neither of the participating electricity grids will be burdened by this mechanism. By using historical data to evaluate our model, we find reasonable economic incentives to migrate positive as well as negative balancing power. In addition, we find that current scenarios favor the migration of negative balancing power. Our research thus reveals realistic opportunities to virtually transfer balancing power between different market areas worldwide.
The increasing share of renewables confronts existing power grids with a massive challenge, stemming from additional volatility to power grids introduced by renewable energy sources. This increases the demand for balancing mechanisms, which provide balancing power to ensure that power supply always meets with demand. However, the ability to provide cost-efficient and eco-friendly balancing power can vary significantly between locations. Fridgen et al. (2017) introduce an approach based on geographically distributed data centers, aiming at the spatial migration of balancing power demand between distant locations. Although their approach enables the migration of balancing demand to cost-efficient and/or eco-friendly balancing mechanisms, it will come up against limits if deployed on a global scale. In this paper, we extend Fridgen et al. (2017)'s approach by developing a model based on geographically distributed data centers, which not only enables the migration of balancing demand but also compensates for this migration when it is contradictory between different balancing power markets without burdening conventional balancing mechanisms. Using a simulation based on real-world data, we demonstrate the possibility to exploit the potential of compensation balancing demand offered by spatial load migration resulting in economic gains that will incentivize data center operators to apply our model.