Data Center Dynamics has reported that Microsoft has filed patent applications for two systems to improve data centre sustainability: a tool that manages devices based on their impact on the energy grid, and a carbon capture system.
The tool, it said, looks at the power grid’s carbon intensity at any time (for example, when it is supplementing clean power with gas or coal-fired generators), examines factors such as weather, and then creates a sustainability forecast used to manage device functions, postponing certain tasks to reduce their environmental impact.
The carbon capture system for data centres will collect carbon dioxide from incoming air, compress it and put it into dedicated storage tank. It will be operated by a machine learning model that monitors things like air temperature, computing load of the data centre, and the amount of carbon captured.
