The State Council recently issued the Action Plan for peaking Carbon emissions by 2030, which put forward ten actions to peak carbon emissions, such as implementing green and low-carbon energy transformation actions and implementing actions to save energy, reduce carbon emissions and increase efficiency. Strengthening energy saving and carbon reduction of new infrastructure represented by data centers and promoting data centers to use green energy for power supply can not only promote energy saving and emission reduction in the communications industry, but also promote green and low-carbon energy transformation, promote the construction of new power system and realize the synergy of "computing power + electricity" under the "dual carbon" goal.
Computing power supports the construction of new power systems
In the construction of new power system, power production will be expanded from centralized to distributed. Large-scale centralized new energy power stations and massive distributed power stations will be built and widely connected according to local conditions according to the availability and economy of resources. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the use of digital technology means, rely on distributed edge computing force and centralized large-scale computing force, accurately implement flexible, wide and efficient energy resources optimization monitoring and operation management, give full play to the role of energy and power consumption demand side response resources, and maximize access to new energy services.
Among them, the large computing power center is the core infrastructure supporting the new power system. It will store and process massive power operation data and equipment information, and provide computing power support for grid operation analysis, operation optimization, risk prediction and other scenarios based on big data and artificial intelligence technology. The advantages of distributed edge computing data center lie in local computing and low latency response, which can complete more computing processing locally, greatly improve processing efficiency, reduce cloud pressure while ensuring local data security, and provide users with faster response services.
For green development, we need to strengthen the synergy between computing power and electricity
Data centres, which provide computing power, are big consumers of energy and carbon dioxide because of their high power consumption. Taking Beijing as an example, data shows that in 2021, the existing data center cabinets in Beijing will account for about 10% to 12% of the national total, and the total power of data centers will account for about 8% of the city's average power supply load. The rapid growth of data centers not only puts pressure on Beijing's carbon emission index, but also challenges the safe operation of power supply.
In addition, in order to ensure reliable operation, the data center is equipped with uninterruptible power supply and backup generator set, whose capacity is basically the same as the maximum power of the data center. Take Guangdong Province as an example. By the end of 2020, up to 1.5 million standard 2.5-kilowatt cabinets under construction and under construction have been put into operation and passed the energy-saving review, and the total capacity of the uninterruptible power supply and backup generator sets can reach 3.75 million kilowatts. Based on the energy storage bidirectional adjustment capacity, the adjustment capacity will reach 7.5 million kilowatts. More than one third of guangzhou's peak power load of 20 million kw. It can be seen from the data that the power flexibility resource of data center has the characteristics of high potential availability and large capacity.
To this end, on the one hand, data centers can increase the use of wind power, photovoltaic and other new energy power resources, promote the use of a higher proportion of new energy; On the other hand, it can make full use of the power flexibility characteristics of data centers, activate and realize the space-time aggregation of sleeping resources through market mechanism and advanced information technology, and step on the road of green and low-carbon development.
Technology, top-level planning and management systems need to be improved
With the development of digital economy, the growth of computing power will become an inevitable trend, and the high energy consumption attribute of computing power also determines that it has a close mutual support relationship with electricity. The organic collaborative evolution process of "computing power + electricity" needs not only technological advancement, but also the continuous improvement of top-level planning and management system.
First, physical information technology is needed. First, the management and control technologies of uninterruptible power supply and standby power supply need to be upgraded, including device status monitoring, channel status monitoring, behavior recording, effect evaluation, information interaction, linkage control, etc. Second, blockchain technology needs to be applied. Its distributed storage, tamper-proof and other characteristics make it very suitable for the multi-agent, multi-location, multi-element "computing power + power" collaborative mode. Through blockchain technology, the flexible resources of the data center computing power network are linked up, and the core elements of establishing trust between subjects, such as quantitative authentication and revenue distribution of "computing power + power" collaboration, are solidified in the form of smart contract. In order to solve the relevant technical problems, the Energy Internet Innovation Institute of Tsinghua University put forward the collaborative development innovation concept of "computing power + power", actively promoted the implementation of relevant technology research, and carried out SPEAR demonstration project construction.
Secondly, need to carry out "calculation power + power" overall planning. There should be an organic coordination between the east and the West in computing power and the transmission of electricity from the west to the east. Most of China's new energy sources are distributed in the northwest and southwest regions. Data centers are distributed in developed regions in the east, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The east has developed industry, but is short of energy and computing power. The central and western regions are rich in energy and computing power resources, but they are not fully utilized. Through overall planning, the optimization work force and power infrastructure and the application of time and space layout, matching real-time and non real-time, variable and rigidity of power supply and power demand, helps to form data, business demand, and according to the economic benefits of the configuration, the effective sharing of the force distribution, at the same time, promote new energy northwest, southwest region local given and the realization of data center green low carbon development.
Finally, continuous innovation is needed in the system. At present, data center construction specifications and guidelines focus on power use efficiency indicators such as PUE, while there is no power flexibility resource indicator for data center. Simply encouraging data centers to purchase zero-carbon electricity from new sources, while their own demand remains rigid, transfers the burden of new energy volatility to an external system in which each player assumes certain responsibilities and obligations. First, the traditional idea can be changed. In data center construction and operation specifications, the provision of uninterruptible power supply and standby power supply as all or part of power flexibility resources can be added. 2 it is to form effective incentive mechanism, and through the top design and policy guidance, promote data center operations and data center assets, industry ecology, creating new data to calculate power scheduling, data center operations services extend aggregators for power load, power flexibility resource providers, actively involved in the power trading and ancillary services in the market.
Wuhan Xinshengneng is a professional power testing equipment manufacturer. We pay close attention to the development and trends of power grid related industries. For more information, visit wuhan Xinshengneng's official website: www.whxsn.com
