Behind the patent: A way to boost clean energy use in datacenters

By: Pramod V R and Vikramsihn Desai

With businesses in every industry talking about environmental sustainability, one data point should give reason for pause: Enterprise datacenters account for approximately 2% of total electricity use in the United States.¹  

Surprising though it may be, the number represents an opportunity to apply clean energy, which is what US11853936,² our recently patented invention known informally as the '936 patent, aims to do.

One day, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, IT systems operators may use the methods and systems outlined in the ‘936 patent to minimize the environmental impact of workloads by boosting clean energy consumption in multi-datacenter environments.

How the ‘936 patent works

The methods and systems outlined in the ‘936 patent reduce the carbon footprint of datacenters by redistributing workloads to other facilities that use renewable energy.

Specifically, the invention uses a server to monitor and tag data such as energy consumption, location, regulatory policies, renewable energy capacity and workload characteristics. When renewable energy usage in one datacenter reaches established thresholds, a policy engine and a separate scheduling engine will work together to:

• Identify datacenters (traditional, edge, containerized, colocation, hybrid) with extra renewable energy workload capacity
• Determine when and where to move workloads from the original datacenter
• Replicate data from the primary datacenter to help prevent data loss
• Estimate how long it will take to migrate a workload to the secondary datacenter

Using this data, engineers can manually move workloads to another datacenter with renewable energy capacity or create a program that embodies the invention to migrate workloads automatically. It doesn’t matter if the target datacenter is located across the street, across the country or around the globe.

What makes the ‘936 patent unique?

Continuity is the main difference between the methods and systems detailed in the ‘936 patent and other datacenter energy conservation methods.

Many organizations optimize datacenter power usage by consolidating workloads within the same data environment and turning off individual servers to lower energy consumption. Though effective, this approach takes servers offline, disrupting real-time access to data and reducing the system’s overall efficiency, also known as power usage effectiveness (PUE).³

On the other hand, the methods and systems described in the ‘936 patent predict when a datacenter will reach its clean energy consumption threshold. Servers never have to go offline because the invention proactively locates and ranks datacenters where workloads could be moved based on the amount and type of renewable energy available.

With the methods and systems described in the ‘936 patent, there is no data downtime when workloads are moved to a different datacenter. Engineers can either direct workloads to a datacenter with additional renewable energy capacity or set parameters to automatically distribute workloads before the percentage of renewable energy consumption reaches a certain threshold.

Benefits of the ‘936 patent

Costs to use renewable energy are decreasing,⁴ so the methods and systems detailed in the ‘936 patent make good business and environmental sense. Potential benefits include:

• Reduced environmental impact. The primary goals of the solution outlined in the ‘936 patent are to optimize the use of renewable energy and improve energy efficiency standards. Showing a commitment to environmental sustainability can strengthen a company’s reputation and advance corporate social responsibility initiatives.
• Improved energy efficiency. By benchmarking datacenters’ energy efficiency and moving workloads to more efficient datacenters, the methods and systems outlined in the ‘936 patent can help lower operational costs by reducing power consumption and related energy costs.
• Enhanced workload management. The policy and scheduling engines in the ‘936 patent control workload migration, which makes it faster to deploy and scale services. Over time, enhanced workload management may help improve the overall performance and reliability of IT systems.

Currently, the main drawback to the methods and systems described in the ‘936 patent is the lack of green datacenter availability. Once more renewable-energy-powered facilities are operating globally, there should be few downsides to the technology.

Potential use cases of the ‘936 patent

Since the methods and systems described in the ‘936 patent are designed to move workloads across traditional, edge or hybrid datacenters, the invention has potential use cases in most industries and organizations. Some of the more promising applications are in:

• Telecommunications
• Manufacturing
• Energy
• Healthcare
• Retail

A final word on the ‘936 patent

With organizations under increasing pressure to minimize their environmental impact and datacenter energy consumption expected to double by 2030,⁵ the need for clean energy sources is paramount. The methods and systems detailed in the ‘936 patent offer a viable solution, which should place the invention on the shortlist of alternatives for organizations seeking ways to reduce their carbon footprint while keeping their datacenters online. 

Pramod V R is a Master Inventor and an Associate Director on Kyndryl’s solutioning team. Vikramsihn Desai is an Associate Director on Kyndryl’s solutioning team.

¹ Datacenters and servers, Energy.gov, June 2024
² Minimizing the environmental impact of workloads, Google Patents, December 2023
³ What is power usage effectiveness, TechTarget, June 2024
⁴ Renewable energy–powering a safer future, United Nations, June 2024
⁵ Newmark: US data center power consumption to double by 2030, Data Center Dynamics, January 2024