Green IP over WDM Networks: Solar and Wind Renewable Sources and Data Centres

In this paper we propose the use of renewable energy in IP over WDM networks to reduce the non-renewable energy consumption and consequently the CO₂ emission. A Linear Programming (LP) model and a novel heuristic, REO-hop, are developed for improving renewable energy utilization. The results show that the non-renewable energy consumption can be reduced by up to 73%. We also study IP over WDM networks with data centres and investigate the problem of whether to locate data centres next to renewable energy or to transmit renewable energy to data centres. Taking into account the electrical power transmission losses the results show that by optimizing the data centre locations such that the network´s power consumption is minimized up to 71% of the network´s power consumption can be saved.