Parasol and GreenSwitch: Managing Datacenters Powered by Renewable Energy

Several companies have recently announced plans to build “green” datacenters, i.e. datacenters partially or completely powered by re-newable energy. These datacenters will either generate their own renewable energy or draw it directly from an existing nearby plant. Besides reducing carbon footprints, renewable energy can poten-tially reduce energy costs, reduce peak power costs, or both. How-ever, certain renewable fuels are intermittent, which requires ap-proaches for tackling the energy supply variability. One approach is to use batteries and/or the electrical grid as a backup for the renewable energy. It may also be possible to adapt the workload to match the renewable energy supply. For highest benefits, green datacenter operators must intelligently manage their workloads and the sources of energy at their disposal. In this paper, we first discuss the tradeoffs involved in buildin