Should Small-Scale Data Centers Participate in the Day-Ahead Electricity Market?
For small-scale data center operators, this work provides a financially viable pathway to integrate into electricity markets, addressing grid strain from growing AI demand.
The paper proposes a bilateral power purchase agreement and a risk-averse bidding strategy for small-scale data centers to participate in the day-ahead electricity market, achieving a 22% cost reduction compared to conventional time-of-use schemes.
The global race to artificial intelligence competitive advantage is challenging electricity grids by demanding growing data center capacity. Addressing this challenge requires synergistic operational strategies that integrate data centers into electricity markets while supporting grid operation. This work proposes a bilateral power purchase agreement between small-scale data centers and distribution system operators, enabling data center participation in the day-ahead electricity market. To facilitate market participation, we develop a scenario-based, risk-averse bidding strategy that leverages flexibility from local energy resources, waste heat recovery, and data center workload. The strategy jointly minimizes operational costs and carbon emissions, creating a carbon-aware cost-effective framework for data center integration in the electricity day-ahead market. The method is evaluated on a study case comparing a conventional time-of-use supply scheme with the proposed custom power purchase agreement, showing a potential 22\% cost reduction, thus highlighting financial opportunities for small-scale data centers day-ahead electricity market participation. Two additional case studies illustrate the marginal effects of: (i) data center flexible workload on energy costs and (ii) virtual de-rating of grid transfer capacity.