Coordinating Power Grid Frequency Regulation Service with Data Center Load Flexibility

Abstract: AI/ML data center growth have led to higher energy consumption and carbon emissions. The shift to renewable energy and growing data center energy demands can destabilize the power grid. Power grids rely on frequency regulation reserves, typically fossil-fueled power plants, to stabilize and balance the supply and demand of electricity. This paper sheds light on the hidden carbon emissions of frequency regulation service. Our work explores how modern GPU data centers can coordinate with power grids to reduce the need for fossil-fueled frequency regulation reserves. We first introduce a novel metric, Exogenous Carbon, to quantify grid-side carbon emission reductions resulting from data center participation in regulation service. We additionally introduce EcoCenter, a framework to maximize the amount of frequency regulation provision that GPU data centers can provide, and thus, reduce the amount of frequency regulation reserves necessary. We demonstrate that data center participation in frequency regulation can result in Exogenous carbon savings that oftentimes outweigh Operational carbon emissions.