3 Key Reasons to Add Peak Shaving to Your Data Center Strategy

In today’s global society, energy—specifically electricity—is the backbone of every major industry. From industrial manufacturing to AI data centers, nothing runs without energy. However, with increasing political tensions and growing energy demands, electricity is becoming more valuable and, at the same time, more vulnerable than ever before. Today's AI workloads generate fluctuating power demand associated, in part, with large language model training algorithms. If your company currently works within the data center field, understanding how peak shaving works and how supercapacitor systems can help your data center company control energy consumption more efficiently by smoothing out short-term power fluctuations to the grid could become handy.

What is peak shaving?

Peak shaving, also referred to as load shedding is a strategy for avoiding peak demand charges on the electrical grid by quickly reducing power consumption during intervals of high demand. Peak shaving can be accomplished by either switching off equipment or by utilizing energy storage such as on-site energy storage systems. The objective of peak shaving is to eliminate short-term spikes in demand and prevent stressing upstream electrical infrastructure.

Why peak shaving matters?

Power fluctuations are a result of complex algorithm executing tasks simultaneously. This process is key in algorithms performance and will most likely increase in time. This puts data centers in a dilemma, having to pay the highest price for electricity when they need it the most. Avoiding that situation, data center companies can implement a peak shaving strategy that allows them to optimize and lower energy costs, control consumption and increase network reliability while minimizing the risk of short circuits. Peak shaving therefore not only reduces energy costs, but also promotes the energy efficiency of industrial companies, increases the reliability and security of the network, and significantly promotes more sustainable energy consumption.?

1. Performance

Power demand of AI data centers has increased significantly to a point where it becomes problematic to grid infrastructures. As a result, some utility providers are imposing power limitations/thresholds to data centers, which might result in throttling computing power of their equipment to prevent peaks from exceeding these limits. Supercapacitors can smooth the power demand on the grid as well as reducing the average baseload, resulting in an increase in performance of the computing assets.?

2. Cost Savings

Electric utilities often charge higher prices for peak power consumption. By reducing average base load energy consumption, data centers can, reduce electricity costs.

3. Enhanced data center stability

Reducing peak demand eases the burden on the electricity grid and increases grid stability, especially in times of high demand. This, in turn, significantly reduces the number of short circuits and fault states.?

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How can peak shaving be implemented??

Peak shaving technology utilizes supercapacitors at various sections of the electrical infrastructure of a data center. The closer they are to the source (computing infrastructure), the more benefit they provide to the upstream electrical systems. Supercapacitors are installed in a configuration that allows charging them when the computing power demand is low and providing this power back when the computing power demand is high, resulting in smoothing high and low frequency power peaks to a uniform baseload. This can be conducted with power cabinets at the UPS level or by adding Supercapacitors in the racks at the shelf level.

What if peak shaving is ignored?

Failing to implement peak shaving can result in:

Increased peak loads: Higher peak loads lead to higher energy costs and strain on the grid, increasing the likelihood of short circuits and outages.? ?

Unstable networks: Without proper load management, energy consumption remains erratic, resulting in unreliable grid performance and potential disruptions.?

Higher infrastructure costs: Ignoring peak shaving could require expensive upgrades to infrastructure, such as transformers and power lines, to manage peak loads effectively.

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In an era of increasing energy demand, particularly with the rise of AI and data centers, understanding and implementing peak shaving is no longer optional—it’s essential. By leveraging supercapacitor energy storage systems and optimizing energy use, data centers can improve performance of their computing infrastructure as well as ensuringe grid reliability.?