How much electricity do data centres use and can grids cope?

Numbers match the citations in the article. A working link isn't proof that a page supports a claim; check the quoted passage and date.

1. 1

   Trends in Data Centre Energy Consumption under the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency

   Energies (Avgerinou et al.)Published Sep 22, 2017Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “There are no recent estimations of the total energy consumption of the European data centre and of their energy efficiency. The aim of this paper is to evaluate, analyse and present the current trends in energy consumption and efficiency in data centres in the European Union using the data submitted by companies participating in the European Code of Conduct for Data Centre Energy Efficiency programme, a voluntary initiative created in 2008 in response to the increasing energy consumption in data centres and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply security impacts. The analysis shows that the average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of the facilities participating in the programme is declining year after year. This confirms that voluntary approaches could be effective in addressing climate and energy issue.”

2. 2

   Electricity Intensity of Internet Data Transmission: Untangling the Estimates

   Journal of Industrial Ecology (Aslan et al.)Published Aug 1, 2017Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “This study identifies representative estimates for the average electricity intensity of fixed-line Internet transmission networks over time and suggests criteria for making accurate estimates in the future. Differences in system boundary, assumptions used, and year to which the data apply significantly affect such estimates. Surprisingly, methodology used is not a major source of error, as has been suggested in the past. This article derives criteria to identify accurate estimates over time and provides a new estimate of 0.06 kWh/GB for 2015. By retroactively applying our criteria to existing studies, we were able to determine that the electricity intensity of data transmission (core and fixed-line access networks) has decreased by half approximately every 2 years since 2000 (for developed countries), a rate of change comparable to that found in the efficiency of computing more generally. Supplementary Information: The online version of this article (doi:10.1111/jiec.12630) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.”

3. 3

   Data centres in the ancillary services market

   International Green Computing Conference (IGCC) (Aikema et al.)Published Jun 1, 2012Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “Ancillary services are the mechanisms power grids use to address short-term variability in supply and demand as well as the impact of power plant or transmission line failures. Organizations providing such services can earn revenue, or at least reduce their energy costs. This paper explores options for large data centres to reduce costs in this way. Simulation results are presented for a system that models the processing of a workload and the resulting energy use, focusing on the impact of providing specific types of ancillary services. Trace data recording the workload from three supercomputing facilities along with pricing information from a US-based electrical grid are used. Results presented show energy costs reduced by up to 12% with only a small impact on the quality of service provided to users of the data centre. Further reductions in energy costs are shown for data centres willing to cede more control over short-term energy consumption.”

4. 4

   Data centre water consumption

   npj Clean Water (Mytton)Published Feb 15, 2021Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “To reliably support the online services used by these billions of users, data centres have been built around the world to provide the millions of servers they contain with access to power, cooling and internet connectivity. Whilst the energy consumption of these facilities regularly receives mainstream and academic coverage, analysis of their water consumption is scarce. Data centres consume water directly for cooling, in some cases 57% sourced from potable water, and indirectly through the water requirements of non-renewable electricity generation. Although in the USA, data centre water consumption (1.7 billion litres/day) is small compared to total water consumption (1218 billion litres/day), there are issues of transparency with less than a third of data centre operators measuring water consumption. This paper examines the water consumption of data centres, the measurement of that consumption, highlights the lack of data available to assess water efficiency, and discusses and where the industry is going in attempts to reduce future consumption.”

5. 5

   Smart grid integrated green data centres as ancillary service providers

   International Conference on Clean Electrical Power (Arnone et al.)Published Jun 1, 2015Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “In this paper a review of Green Data Centres facilities to support smart grids operation is proposed. The paper describes the ancillary services a Green Data Centre can provide both in terms of spinning reserve provision and different regulation services. In the application section, a real electrical grid hosting a data centre is considered. The infrastructure is owned by Engineering S.p.A. and is installed in northern Italy. The system has been considered as connected to the MV distribution grid in presence of other renewable energy sources. The impact of possible power management operations over the considered data centre has been studied by means of a simulation software and the spinning reserve it can supply to the grid in case of wind farm power production reduction has been analysed.”

6. 6

   Reducing the environmental impact of cloud data centres achieved through renewable energy sources under power grid energy trading with enhanced VM consolidation techniques

   International Journal of Services Economics and Management (Karthikeyan et al.)Published Jan 1, 2025Checked Oct 6, 2026

   “In this article, we focus on the problems of cost-effective green scheduling for cloud data centres through power trading and power grid transactions. Energy utilised to power the data centres can either be self-generated or it can be acquired from a renewable power plant. In order to partially offset the high-energy costs of data centres, they can either be directly powered by renewable energy sources or their excess electricity can be deposited in energy storage devices (ESD). This article is focused on the following two problem statements that have been identified: 1) cutting down on the total amount of energy by carefully organising users' needs, infrastructure, and the application of different types of energy sources; 2) lowering overall carbon discharges through an effective plan for energy use our tryouts prove that our methodology can significantly cut cloud data centres' carbon emissions by 15% compared to the existing methodology.”