Use of renewable energy in an IP over WDM network with data centres

The presence of data centres in IP over wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks can create a hot node scenario leading to a significant increase in the power consumption of data centre nodes. In this study, the authors investigate introducing renewable energy to IP over WDM networks with data centres and evaluate the problem of whether to locate data centres next to renewable energy or to transmit renewable energy to data centres. Given a network topology and a number of wind farm locations and taking into account the electrical power transmission losses, the authors identify the optimal location of data centres through linear programming such that the network´s power consumption is minimised. The results show that optimising the data centre locations under the multi-hop bypass heuristic with renewable energy can lead up to 71% of the power consumption.