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• • Compressed air storage alone can firm up wind and solar variability in California. • • Increased penetration of renewable energy can decrease CAES storage requirements. • • Type of renewable energy strongly affects the required CAES capacity. • • Bulk CAES deployment has limited applications due to real-world constraints. Bulk energy storage can play an important role in the decarbonization of renewable-dominant electricity system. It can offer a solution to the grid balancing problem caused by the variability in the output of renewable power generation. This paper explores the requirement for compressed air energy storage (CAES) capacity as the penetration of renewable energy increases to compensate for the variability of wind and solar. A case study for California using parsimonious macro energy model with real-world historical demand and hourly weather data has been utilized to do this analysis. In the least-cost model, with no excess wind and solar power generation, required CAES capacity is 3.71TWh in 100% decarbonized scenario. If a strict rule of net-zero curtailment was in place, the storage capacity required would be 3.2% higher (3.83TWh) with 9.8% increased cost of electricity. However, the required CAES capacity decreases with the excess solar and wind power generation. In case of 2 times increase in the wind and solar potential the required CAES capacity with strict zero curtailment would be 19.2% less (3.10TWh) and the corresponding cost would decrease up to 29.7%. The study also revealed that the type of renewable energy mix (wind, solar or both) has strong effect on the required energy storage capacity for deep decarbonization. The presented results demonstrate that excess wind and solar power generation can be used to significantly reduce the required storage needs for a fully renewable power system at reduced cost. In California, building of a large battery energy storage (up to 3 TWh) is limited by societal, geographical, and economic constraints. This study suggests that in addition to the battery energy storage California may need to look for other dispatchable power sources (or the equivalent in load flexibility) for 100% wind and solar based fully decarbonized power system. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Study the vision of engaging networked data centers into distributed energy markets. • Propose a decision-making model to optimize the bidding decisions and energy resource operations of networked data centers in multiple geo-distributed local energy markets. • Conduct comprehensive numerical simulations to validate the benefit the cloud service provider can obtain from local energy markets. Active distribution network Internet Data Centers (IDCs) are large energy consumers in modern distribution networks. The integration of renewable energy and energy storage systems transforms IDCs into proactive energy prosumers, and enables them to participate in the energy trading in regional local energy markets. This paper proposes an energy management framework for a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) that manages multiple geographically distributed IDCs. The framework provides decision-making support for the CSP to optimally schedule the IDCs' cyber-energy resources (computing requests, on-site battery energy storage systems, and on-site renewable energy sources). In this way, the proposed framework facilitates the CSP to proactively participate in the local energy markets situated in the regions that host the IDCs, with the objective to minimize the CSP's total cost over a finite operation horizon. We use an effective evolutionary computation algorithm to solve the proposed energy management model and design extensive numerical simulations to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]