Comprehensive understanding of operation cost reduction using energy storage for IDCs

To reduce the operation cost incurred by the rapidly growing energy consumption in internet data centers (IDCs), more and more internet service providers have spontaneously started using energy storage in various forms. The approach of energy storage is used to store cheap electricity energy when the electricity price from smart gird is low or the renewable energy is used. There are two typical forms of energy storage equipped in many IDCs, i.e., the battery storage and thermal energy storage. Recent work shows the energy storage can significantly reduce the operation cost for IDCs. However, the cost of the energy storage devices are still at a high level, and it may increase the operation cost for IDCs. In this paper, we investigate the comprehensive understanding on the operation cost reduction for IDCs using the energy storage. To this end, we conduct a quantitative analysis on the normalized electricity price in the two energy storage forms. The experiments demonstrate that the cost of the storage devices and renewable energy supply are largely affected by the storage capacity and the location of data centers, and we conclude that it does not always reduce operation cost using energy storage for IDCs.