(Cordova, Alaska). Satisfying runaway demand for new data infrastructure driven by exponential growth in regenerative artificial intelligence (AI) applications has stressed metropolitan energy markets to their limits. This has driven the largest cloud service providers to compete for sites to build the massive hyper-scale data centers which drive the information economy – crowding out other energy users and driving up electricity prices. This growth in data processing is also straining the energy markets themselves, as noted by the Linux Foundation in a Forward to a new white paper published by the Alaska Microgrid Group. This scramble to keep up with surging demand for cleaner sources of electricity in urban areas is not a viable long-term solution. It is clear that a more sustainable and smarter deployment path is needed.
Enter the edge data center concept. Just as microgrids can provide electricity on the grid edge, modular and distributed data centers can follow suit when it comes to computer and internet services for remote communities that have been left behind in today’s digital economy.
Cordova, Alaska sits at the mouth of the Copper River, one of the world’s premier salmon fisheries, and is showing the way with a solution with wide ranging implications and applications. The Cordova Electric Cooperative (CEC) has long been an electric utility pioneer with innovative technology advances in run-of-the-river hydro optimization, battery energy storage and the undergrounding of power lines years before this latter infrastructure approach was embraced by much larger utilities in the continental US. The cooperative’s key technology partner for deployment of a 150 kW modular edge data center is Greensparc of San Francisco, a company whose mission is delivering data services to the world’s data disenfranchised in the most efficient and sustainable manner possible.
“Cordova’s highly automated grid and high-resolution sensor technologies provide a perfect testing ground to develop use cases for this grid-edge modular data center technology,” said Sam Enoka, CEO of Greensparc. Building on previous successes and innovations, CEC plans to manage flexible data processing loads in response to the availability of excess hydropower. “Combining edge modular data centers with remote, renewable-based microgrids can serve as a model not only for other parts of Alaska, but for much of the rest of the world,” said Enoka.
Alaska has long been perceived as an isolated frontier at the top of the world, an outlier in the Arctic with little relevance to the rest of the world when it comes to infrastructure trends. This view was never truly valid. For over a century, Alaska has deployed many advanced technologies around large resource development projects in their remote landscape, including more microgrids than any other U.S. state. Some run almost completely on carbon-free resources and have for decades. Many of these systems have relied upon older, vintage technologies due to the lack of reliable internet service, but are now poised for a leap into data services.
“Due to their smaller scale and modular design elements, edge data centers represent an ideal opportunity to move away from conventional diesel-based uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems to a more resilient, cost-effective and sustainable business model revolving around clean on-site generation and energy storage assets,” said Clay Koplin, CEO of Cordova Electric Cooperative. “Just as these edge data centers will be needed to support growth in regenerative AI, AI will also be utilized to optimize operations and improve performance of asset aggregations over time, a symbiotic and virtuous cycle. Electricity and data are the fuel for the future of tomorrow’s economy. Alaska is again plowing new ground,” he added.
The white paper, which is co-authored by Koplin, Enoka and Peter Asmus, executive director of the Alaska Microgrid Group, lays out four primary benefits of co-locating edge data centers within microgrids:
Reduced cost
Improved application performance and uptime
Better governance and compliance
Accurate environmental reporting
Perhaps the single most pioneering attribute of the Cordova Greensparc installation will be the ability of the servers to increase data processing demands in response to the availability of excess hydropower to create new revenue streams for CEC. This has implications that extend outside Cordova to regional opportunities. Regional hosting of new cloud-based sensor technologies are a perfect example.
As noted in the Forward by the Linux Foundation, which champions open source platforms that have proved successful in the IT realm but which are now being applied and adapted to energy infrastructure:
Smaller, modular, and more efficient edge data centers are the wave of the future. This white paper examines how Cordova, a fishing village in Southcentral Alaska, is bridging the digital divide and mapping out a vision for the edge where both electricity and data leverage emerging technology trends to chart the way for similar remote and rural communities around the world.
The white paper can be downloaded at this link.
About Cordova Electric Cooperative. The community of Cordova is located 160 air miles southeast of Anchorage, Alaska. CEC serves about 1,500 members. Two run-of-river hydro plants, commissioned in 1991 and 2002, provide 75% of the community’s energy for half the cost of the legacy diesel generators. CEC’s peak load is 9 MW in summer seafood processing months with an average year-round load of approximately 3.5 MW. https://www.cordovaelectric.com/
About Greensparc. This San Francisco-based company offers modular and scalable micro-data centers that reduce the cost of ownership by 30-40%, operations costs by 50-80% and reduce emissions by up to 50% while greatly reducing deployment time frames. With deployments ranging from 50 kW to over 1 MW, Greensparc offers an infrastructure-as-a-service business model in collaboration with local stakeholders. https://www.greensparc.com/
About the Alaska Microgrid Group. Executive Director Peter Asmus is a global thought leader on microgrids and has over 35 years of experience in the energy industry. The Alaska Microgrid Group offers technical assistance and consulting services both inside Alaska and worldwide, allowing rural and remote communities to learn from microgrid innovators. https://www.alaskamicrogrid.org/
About the Linux Foundation. Established in 2000, the Linux Foundation is a non-profit group that serves as a neutral, trusted hub for developers and organizations to code, manage and scale open source technology projects and ecosystems. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/
For more information, please contact Peter Asmus, Executive Director, Alaska Microgrid Group: peter@akmicrogrid.org.
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