CQuanDRI = Carbon Quandry with Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI)

What’s the scope of this work?
This project provides a measurement trace that captures the sustainability aspects in the operation of a DRI service, including dependencies between different indicators (e.g. data flow, power consumption, and carbon intensity).

The project aimed to produce a system dynamics model to evaluate interventions for decarbonising parts of the DRI while taking into account the geographical and temporal variations in the electricity supply carbon intensity. This work was set in the specific context of the Tier-1 GridPP services, a major particle physics computing facility operated by the Science Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).

A run-time power performance analysis of representative production workload was undertaken, and a systems dynamics model developed. A new quantitative model of locational marginal carbon intensity was also developed. This was then applied to evaluate some intervention scenarios for decarbonisation.

This work looked to answer questions such as:

  • How does variability in the utilisation of infrastructure translate to energy consumption?
  • Which are the indicators that minimise uncertainty of associated carbon footprints?
  • How does the varying grid carbon intensity affect carbon footprints, and can this be exploited to reduce emissions?

The full report can be found here: DOI:10.5281/zenodo.7692133

cquandri

Representatives:
Daniel Schien, Bristol University
Noa Zilberman, Oxford University
Alastair Dewhurst, STFC
David Greenwood, Newcastle University

Initial abstract: DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6948779

Final report: DOI:10.5281/zenodo.7692133