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conference paper

Decentralized ICT integration in residential buildings

Lepour, Dorsan  
•
Saracco, Jacopo
•
Maréchal, François  
July 2022
Proceedings of ECOS 2022: The 35th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems
The 35th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems

To answer the growing demand for data computing, data storage and data transmission, the current trend is to construct centralized hyperscale data centers, whose power usage effectiveness (PUE) has substantially improved in recent years. Still, the operation of hyperscale data centers has economic and environmental impacts on society, especially if their residual heat is not reused. This study aims to present the economic and environmental rationales of decentralized computing capacities integrated into the building stock. The proposed solution simultaneously tackles the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from the residential sector and the ever-increasing global data demand, by exploiting the synergy between domestic thermal needs and digital services, while integrating PV production. The originality of this work resides in its holistic approach and multi-services (data, heat and electricity) dimension. A Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) energy modelling optimization framework is developed to assess the economic and environmental performance of centralized hyperscale infrastructures versus decentralized building-integrated computing units with heat recovery. Results for the decentralized solution underline the reduction of environmental impact (-16.3%) and global cost (-27.7%) for the benefits of the whole society. As part of an integrated system, these decentralized computing units foster PV penetration, avoid the oversizing of a heat pump, and achieve high self-consumption (96%), while preventing the installation of a battery through coordination between thermal storage, data services and solar availability. This efficient solution offering an unmatched energy reuse effectiveness (ERE) shows the whole potential of the digitalization of energy systems, is a key contribution to building energy systems design, and reveals a promising approach to mitigate the increasing energy consumption of the ICT sector.

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Type
conference paper
Author(s)
Lepour, Dorsan  

EPFL

Saracco, Jacopo
Maréchal, François  

EPFL

Date Issued

2022-07

Publisher

Technical University of Denmark

Published in
Proceedings of ECOS 2022: The 35th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems
DOI of the book
10.11581/dtu.00000267
ISBN of the book

978-87-7475-698-9

Start page

1093

End page

1104

Subjects

Building energy systems

•

Decentralization

•

Digitalization

•

Mixed integer linear programming

•

Sectoral coupling

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
IPESE  
Event nameEvent acronymEvent placeEvent date
The 35th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems

ECOS 2022

Copenhagen, Denmark

2022-07-04 - 2022-07-07

Available on Infoscience
June 9, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/251169
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