Research on low-carbon scheduling strategy for virtual power plants considering data center demand response

To mitigate the substantial energy footprint of data centers and exploit their flexibility for low-carbon power scheduling, a low-carbon economic dispatch scheme is developed for virtual power plants (VPPs) that explicitly models the spatiotemporal distribution of data-center workloads. First, the flexibility of data center workload adjustment in temporal shifting and spatial migration is characterized and exploited, and the “source-load-storage” coordinated scheduling architecture, including wind power generation, photovoltaic power generation, energy storage systems and data center, is constructed. Second, the carbon trading mechanism and tenant satisfaction function are introduced to minimize the total operating cost, composed of energy storage, electricity transaction, and carbon trading costs. Considering the tenant satisfaction constraint, power-balance constraint, energy storage system constraint, and electricity transaction constraint, the VPP optimal scheduling model, including data center, is established. Finally, an example is analyzed based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 118-bus system and the operation data of an actual data center in Gansu Province. Simulation studies validate that the scheme leverages workload spatiotemporal shifting to curb system-level carbon emissions and total operating expenditure, while maintaining tenant quality of service and markedly enhancing renewable-energy utilization.