Can Microsoft’s data centers become big batteries for the grid?

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft's data centers could one day provide backup power to electric grids. The data centers have on-site batteries that they can use during a power failure. The backup system could be used to shore up grids in need of more batteries to store energy from solar panels or wind farms.

That type of energy storage is crucial for any city or region trying to get its grid to run on renewable energy. Microsoft will attempt to provide that service for the first time when it opens a data center in Dublin, Ireland.

Solar and wind energy ebbs and flows with the weather. While they have become cleaner and cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels, they will need to come with batteries that can store energy for the grid that can be tapped whenever it's needed. That is where Microsoft thinks it can help.

The data center has an uninterruptible power supply that only kicks in during emergencies. When the power goes out, the batteries fill in for a short time until the backup generators are online.

When the grid starts seeing more energy demand than it can supply, the hope is that Microsoft's big batteries can provide a similar backup. It may be able to prevent them instead of responding to them. The current spinning reserve system might be replaced by that system. The spinning reserve is the amount of power that gas and coal-fired power plants can provide in case of a spike in demand. The need to keep spinning reserve at coal and gas-fired plants could be reduced with the availability of batteries.

Microsoft isn't saying how much energy the Dublin batteries can provide. Christian Belady is the vice president of the Datacenter Advanced Development group at Microsoft. The batteries will probably be able to give that much juice. A megawatt generated by a power plant could provide electricity for hundreds of homes.

That shows how much energy the data centers use. They use about 1 percent of the world's electricity despite being more efficient.

Between 50 and 100 new data centers are expected to be built by Microsoft. It had more than 200 data centers in the previous year. To keep that expansion from derailing goals it set to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the company needs more renewable energy for its data centers.

The fluctuations that come with more wind and solar energy will have to be dealt with by grids and data centers. Microsoft will be interested in helping grids maintain a more stable power supply as they bring more renewable sources online.

In the past, Microsoft connected data center batteries to the grid in Chicago and Quincy, Washington. Ireland is ideal for commercializing the idea since it relies more on wind for electricity than any other country. It gets 35 percent of its electricity from wind farms. It makes sense to begin there.