Tech giant Google is known for its advanced computing technologies. In recent years it has been developing renewable energy to partially power its data centers. By using its carbon-intelligent computing platform - built to shift energy use at its data centers to times when clean energy is more readily available - it can respond to energy crises around the world.
Normally, when a user does a Google search, it uses some electrical power, and Google also runs some non-urgent tasks in the background, for example YouTube video processing or adding new words to Google Translate.
The Google engineers have developed and piloted a new way to reduce their data centers’ electricity consumption when there is high stress on the local power grid, by shifting some non-urgent computing tasks to other times and locations, without impacting the Google services users need to access.
In the past, increasing energy demand was normally met by adding new power sources to the grid. This is expensive and creates more carbon emissions.
Now, Google can use this task-shifting capability for demand response — temporarily reducing power consumption at their data centers to provide valuable flexibility when it is needed, to help local grids continue operating reliably and efficiently. Reducing demand to support grid operations was previously an emergency measure, deployed only as a last resort. However nowadays demand response can be a critical tool for electricity grids, helping reduce the need for investment in new fossil fuel-based resources, supporting the growth of renewable energy sources like solar and wind, as well as improving grid operations.
Google's new approach builds on the software that runs their carbon-intelligent computing platform, adding new capabilities that allow them to temporarily reduce the power demand of a Google data center when called on to do so by an external power system partner, such as a utility or grid operator.
When Google receive notice from a grid operator of a forecasted local grid event, for example an extreme weather event that could cause a supply shortage, they can use their global computing planning system. This will activates an algorithm that generates hour-by-hour instructions for specified data centers to limit non-urgent computing tasks for the duration of the grid event, and allows them to be rescheduled after the grid event has passed. Where feasible, some of these tasks get rerouted to a data center on a different power grid. All of this is done without additional computer hardware and without impacting the performance of ordinary Google services like Search, Maps, YouTube, Google Cloud, and others that people, businesses, and public sector organizations rely on to keep their systems running.
So this is a new and potentially useful additional tool to help utilities manage loads on their network.