Renewable Energy Might Need An Information Battery Too

The interconnected electrical grid in the United States serves as a miracle worker, serving its consumers almost without fail. However, as renewables such as solar and wind replace fossil fuels, that miracle work becomes more challenging. Coping with this intermittency requires a fundamental assessment of how consumers use and help store energy.

Another option perhaps is to use information as batteries. Two researchers have proposed that tech giants precompute specific data when the grid is humming with solar or wind power. And then store it for later use. While the team called the concept “information batteries,” battery does not refer to an actual device. This is digital and more of a timing strategy than a physical battery. 

The researchers hope to encourage the data-hungry companies to use clean power when it’s plentiful so utilities can avoid burning fossil fuels. These companies include Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix.

“This type of power consumption is somewhat flexible. You cannot charge your car unless the battery has been discharged at least a little bit. And you can’t wash your clothes until they are dirty.” – Jennifer Switzer.

Switzer is a computer scientist at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and one of the researchers. She said that with computing and predicting future needs, you could calculate and store the results before them. She added that you are storing data instead of storing energy to use later.

The Information Battery Concept

The information battery is a new idea, so it hasn’t been introduced in the real world, however, it has several potential uses. Tech companies have to generate all kinds of data. Google builds its search results, while YouTube converts videos into different quality choices for people. 

Facebook has to endorse friends, and Amazon has to endorse products. Most of this processing work is done on demand. But the researchers believe some of it could be done asynchronously when green energy flows into the grid.

Consider the information battery concept similar to the Post Office. The agency could predict how many letters to expect to deliver on a particular day. But it doesn’t know which specific letter a carrier will need to get to your house. So, the Post Office has to consume energy to perform maintenance tasks in advance to enable the less predictable ones. Comparably, if tech companies can get routine data tasks when renewables are accessible, the intermittency of energy sources won’t be a big issue. 

The central concept of the study is that information has a represented energy to it, Barath Raghavan, the co-author of the research, said. Raghavan explained that communication would be effective where things are highly predictable.

Candidates For Testing

Companies that operate enormous data centers are potential candidates for testing out the information battery concept. The universal scale for processing is dramatically increasing. George Porter, co-director of the UCSD Center for Networked Systems, believes that significant providers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are suitable actors in testing the concept.

Raghavan also thinks that managing the intermittency issue is going to be challenging. He added that the proposal might also work for less-intensive energy consumers, like researchers who conduct climate modeling. In this area, you  predict some part of the sub-tasks within that macro computational task, Raghavan said. Also, if you can get accurate data on those sub-tasks, you can precompute them and later retrieve the results. 

It is worthwhile to note that information batteries are not for everyone. But it is, getting the tech giants to meet their demand when green energy is at its peak is likely a cheaper alternative. It is undoubtedly easier than convincing millions of people to time their homes to save energy usage. It could materialize long before there’s a fleet of e-vehicles big enough to serve as a distributed backup power supply. And it could mean remarkable support for a waning power grid.

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