Distributed economic dispatch in power networks incorporating data center flexibility

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Citation
A. Tsiligkaridis, P. Andrianesis, A.K. Coskun, M.C. Caramanis, I.C. Paschalidis. 2025. "Distributed Economic Dispatch in Power Networks Incorporating Data Center Flexibility" IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, pp.1-15. https://doi.org/10.1109/tsusc.2025.3538817
Abstract
We consider Data Centers (DCs) as flexible loads that can alter their power consumption to alleviate congestion in the electric power network. We model DCs using a queuing-theoretic view and we form a Quality of Service (QoS)-based cost function that signifies how well a DC can carry out its workload given an amount of active servers. We integrate DCs in a centralized economic dispatch problem that determines, apart from power generation, DC workload shifting and server utilization, while respecting transmission line constraints. We further present a tractable decentralized formulation obtained via Lagrangian decomposition, which we solve using a dual gradient ascent algorithm. Experimental results on a standard power network explore the system-wide benefits of DC flexibility in “coupled” data and power networks, emphasizing on the trade-offs between the DC location, QoS, and efficiency.
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