System-Level Impacts of Flexible Data Center Load Scheduling on Cost, Emissions, and Transmission Congestion
For grid operators and data center operators, this work quantifies the benefits of flexible scheduling for cost, emissions, and congestion, though it is incremental as it applies existing concepts to a specific test system.
This paper investigates the system-level impacts of flexible data center load scheduling on operating cost, emissions, and transmission congestion using a 2000-bus test system, finding that best-effort loads shift to periods of lower prices and high renewable generation, reducing greenhouse gas and toxic emissions as well as congestion without affecting latency-critical workloads.
Large data centers are being deployed in the U.S. at an unprecedented rate, introducing significant flexible load potential. A portion of data center workloads - best-effort (BE) jobs - can be scheduled flexibly to reduce power system operating costs and emissions. However, the system-level impacts of such scheduling remain underexplored. This paper investigates the effects of flexible data center load scheduling on operating cost, system stress, and emissions using the ACTIVSg2000 2000-bus test system. Results show that BE loads shift toward periods of lower locational marginal prices (LMPs), typically aligned with high renewable generation. Importantly, latency-critical (LC) workloads remain unaffected, preserving quality of service (QoS). Flexible scheduling also leads to reductions in both greenhouse gas and toxic emissions, as well as transmission congestion, compared to inflexible operation, demonstrating its potential to support more efficient and sustainable grid operation.