Funding entity Merlin Properties
The objective of this project is to conduct a preliminary assessment of the impact of renewable energy additionality and hourly matching requirements on a data center's electricity supply, as established in the draft Royal Decree on Data Center Sustainability. The study evaluates the technical and economic implications of these requirements by analyzing the ability of different renewable energy generation and energy storage configurations to meet the data center's electricity demand. Furthermore, it examines the challenges associated with achieving hourly matching between renewable electricity generation and consumption, as well as the implications for system sizing, electricity supply costs, and the feasibility of different electricity supply alternatives.
Layman's summary: Data centers are major consumers of electricity, and their rapid expansion poses significant challenges for the energy transition. The draft Royal Decree on Data Center Sustainability introduces new requirements to promote the use of renewable energy, including the need to deploy additional renewable generation capacity and ensure closer hourly matching between clean electricity generation and consumption. This project examines how these requirements may affect the design and cost of electricity supply for data centers. By evaluating different combinations of solar and wind power generation and energy storage systems, the study explores alternative solutions for meeting regulatory requirements and the challenges of ensuring a continuous electricity supply with a high share of renewable energy.
Techniques employed: Optimization and Statistical Analysis
2026_Merlin_pRD
