On August 17, 2021 Professor Andrew Grimshaw gave a talk in Rice Hall titled "The Role of Computation in Accelerating the Deployment of Renewable Energy Resources".
EveryGWh of electricity produced in the US today leads on average to 0.7 metric tonsof CO2 emissions. Thus, a one MW data center on average leads to the emissionof six thousand metric tons of CO2 per year. That's the bad news. The good news is that renewable, carbon-neutral generation is now the least expensive means to produce electricity in the world, period. This has led to the development of tens of gigawatts of wind and solar in the US and the world in the last decade. In the Great Plains of the US alone, there is now so much excess power that wind and solar resources are often curtailed, leaving terawatt-hours of power unused.
In short, generating sufficient power with renewables is no longer the problem. Instead, the problem is leveraging this power. There are two significant challenges. First, the sun does not always shine, and the wind does not always blow, meaning that the current design of the electrical grid will have to change to accommodate fluctuating generation. Second, the best wind and solar sources arenot proximate to sources of load, namely, population centers and heavy industry.
One way to address this second problem is to identify energy-intensive, economically viable industries that can be feasibly moved to the Great Plains and that can accommodate the large amounts of variable generation provided by renewable energy. Computation fits these requirements: computation turns electricity intovalue and requires only power and networking to operate. Computation can be paused, restarted, and migrated up and down the Great Plains in response to differences in power availability. In essence, data centers can act like giant batteries and grid stabilizers, soaking up power and delivering value when renewable sources are pumping out lots of power, and reducing consumption and stabilizing the grid when renewable sources are limited.
In this talk, Prof. Grimshaw presented how different forms of computation can be used to soak up excess very inexpensive renewable power, stabilize the grid when generators (including windand solar) fluctuate or drop offline, and act like giant batteries by reducing their load and returning their load to the grid. He began with a bit of background on the explosion of renewable energy, the challenges renewables present to the electrical grid, and electricity markets. Then he discussed computation as controllable load, beginning with BitCoin, and then moving toHigh Throughput Computing in support of the sciences, engineering, and AI. He concluded with a discussion of the 2 GW of Clean Compute Campuses that Lanciumis building in Texas.To view the full presentation video, click here.