Integrated planning of internet data centers and battery energy storage systems in smart grids

Abstract Modern power grids have been becoming complex cyber-physical systems integrated with distributed energy sources and information and communication facilities. With prevalence of cloud computing, geo-distributed, networked data centers have become an integrated part of modern grids. The coupling impact between data centers and smart grids thus becomes an important consideration. This paper proposes an integrated planning scheme that optimally determines the locations and capacities of interconnected Internet data centers and battery energy storage systems in a smart grid. The model is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, in which both computational performance metrics of Internet data centers and operational criteria of the grid are coordinately considered as three inter-related but conflict objectives; the coupling impact between the cyber and energy resources are modelled. An advanced evolutionary algorithm – Multi-Objective Natural Aggregation Algorithm is used to solve the model. Extensive case studies are conducted to demonstrate the reasonability and effectiveness of the proposed integrated planning method.