Microsoft Grid-Interactive UPS Bolsters Renewable Energy

Microsoft is using data center batteries to interact with local electricity grids and provide uninterrupted service when demand exceeds the available renewable energy supply. Microsoft is using data center batteries to interact with local electricity grids and provide uninterrupted service when demand exceeds the available renewable energy supply. The sun isn’t always shining, and the wind doesn’t always blow. As renewable energy becomes more prevalent, electric grid operators struggle to put out the exact amount of energy users require. This means electric grids primarily powered with coal and natural gas keep excess capacity, or spinning reserve, to ensure they can quickly respond to a spike in demand. Microsoft is positing banks of lithium-ion batteries in its data centers as an alternative to the carbon-intensive practice of maintaining spinning reserve, which will lower power sector carbon emissions. “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,” Microsoft principal program manager Mycah Gambrell-Ermak explained. This grid service “is a way for us to unlock the value of the data center,” Nur Bernhardt, senior energy program manager at Microsoft, added. The batteries at the foundation of this solution are part of the data center’s uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Their primary purpose is to provide emergency backup power for data centers, but Microsoft says its UPS has been certified, tested, and approved to connect to electricity grids and similarly provide uninterrupted service when necessary. The cloud giant is currently deploying this strategy in its Dublin, Ireland data center. Variable renewables are on track to account for 80% of Ireland’s electricity by 2030, which will require grid-stabilization services from fossil fuel power plants — something Microsoft is working to avoid. The cloud provider is working with Ireland’s transmissions system operator EirGrid and energy services provider Enel X, which aggregates industrial and commercial consumers into virtual power plants. “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,” Gambrell-Ermak explained. Energy advisory firm Baringa estimated that if grid-interactive UPS systems replaced fossil-fuel power plants in Ireland and Northern Ireland, nearly two million tons of carbon emissions would be avoided in 2025. That represents about one-fifth of Ireland’s expected annual emissions from the power sector. Baringa also estimated that Ireland’s electricity consumers will save tens of millions of dollars by avoiding the purchase of fuel and other spinning reserve maintenance costs. “The third win is you reduce the amount you have to turn down renewables,” Baringa’s Mark 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.” “This is definitely moving the dial on emissions at a national level,” Turner added.