Microsoft has teamed up with Enel X as part of a project that uses data centre batteries to help support the growth of renewables on Ireland’s power grid.
Banks of batteries at its Dublin data centre will help provide backup power to Eirgrid, allowing the operator to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels to keep the lights on.
The project, which is due to get under way later this year, will allow power grid operators to use the data centre batteries to maintain excess capacity. That will allow for a quick response from the grid, instead of using coal and natural gas fired power plants, known as the spinning reserve. That, in turn, will lower the power sector’s carbon emissions.
The data centre batteries are part of the uninterruptible power supply (UPS), which provides power conditioning for the servers. Data centres typically rely on batteries in the UPS to keep services running when a power outage occurs, providing power for the servers while the backup generators kick in.
Microsoft’s Dublin data centre has UPS with new technology that enables real-time interaction with the electricity grid, which has been certified, tested and approved for connection to the grid to support grid operators when demand outstrips supply generated by wind, solar and other sources.
Wind power from almost 400 farms has provided 36 per cent of the electricity on Ireland’s grid so far this year. However, the intensity fluctuates over seasons, and even throughout the day, making the grid more volatile as the supply of renewables increases.
“In areas where municipalities or utilities are trying to get away from fossil-based solutions, if there is a dip in renewable reserves, what we can do as a company is take our large amount of load and we can reduce our load by putting our own batteries to use,” Mycah Gambrell-Ermak, a principal programme manager at Microsoft, said. “Utilities, by way of aggregators, can give us a signal that tells us to discharge our batteries to compensate for our load, which then takes the burden off of the grid.”
The project has been several years in the planning. Microsoft began exploring ways to use the batteries in 2017.
“The concept was to use the UPS, which is providing continuous protection, change the controller on the UPS and provide services back to the grid,” said Ehsan Nasr, a senior design researcher with Microsoft’s data centre advanced development group.
Proof-of-concept experiments were carried out in 2020 at a Microsoft data centre in Chicago before the Irish link was made. Replacing the fossil-fuel powered services with the grid-interactive UPS systems would avoid about two million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2025, energy advisory firm Baringa has estimated – about a fifth of the total emissions expected from Ireland’s power sector that year.
“This is definitely moving the dial on emissions at a national level,” said Baringa’s Mark Turner.
It would also save millions of euro in costs for maintaining the spinning reserve. “The third win is you reduce the amount you have to turn down renewables,” Mr Turner said. “That’s because if you turn gas-fired power stations on to provide this service, you’ve got to turn something else off. Often that’s renewables. If you provide this with UPS, you no longer have to do that.”
The Irish project could provide a blueprint for other countries to follow, with Microsoft tapping into EirGrid’s market for grid services through energy services and solutions Enel X, which aggregates industrial and commercial energy consumers into virtual power plants.
“I often think of Ireland as a vision of the future of what other systems’ grids will be like,” Paul Troughton, senior director of regulatory affairs for Enel X.
