A Framework for Several Electricity Retailers Cooperatively Implement Demand Response to Distributed Data Center

A distributed data center cluster (DDCC) consists of data centers that are geographically dispersed while managed by the same company. A DDCC is composed of several data centers in different regions, so it purchases electricity from several electricity retailers in different regions. Commonly, there is a lack of cooperation between the several electricity retailers. In this paper, a cooperation framework where several electricity retailers cooperatively implement incentive-based demand response (DR) to the same DDCC is proposed. Firstly, several electricity retailers which power for the same DDCC together publish their DR instructions to the DDCC. The DR instructions are analyzed in this paper. Then a novel DDCC energy management model is proposed for the DDCC to participate in the collaborative DR. Finally, a reasonable profit distribution mechanism is adopted for the several electricity retailers and the DDCC to allocate the entire profit of the collaborative DR. The case study verifies that the proposed cooperation framework can maximize the whole benefit of the DDCC and the several electricity retailers meanwhile ensures that the profits obtained by each member (the DDCC and the several electricity retailers) from the collaborative DR are not fewer than that of the independent operation.