Evaluation process of demand response compensation models for data centers

The increasing integration of renewable energies into the electricity system and a fluctuating power demand cause high pressure on today's electricity grid. One contemporary approach to deal with this issue is the implementation of demand response mechanisms: In contrary to adjusting the power supply by increasing generation from brown energy sources, the demand side is rendered flexible. Data centers are highly suitable participants for this approach due to their extremely dynamic infrastructure and power consumption. Integration of data centers into demand response programs offers a huge potential and highly benefits energy providers, electricity market and grid. In this paper, we identify six basic theoretical compensation models from common demand response programs. Based on these, we provide an evaluation process, which is visualized as business process model with flowchart notation. This process supports the data center operator in evaluating and selecting a suitable demand response option.