# Ecovisor: A Virtual Energy System for Carbon-Efficient Applications

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.04951 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04951/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Toward Sustainable GenAI using Generation Directives for Carbon-Friendly Large Language Model Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12900/) (2024)
- [FedZero: Leveraging Renewable Excess Energy in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15092/) (2023)
- [Online Conversion with Switching Costs: Robust and Learning-Augmented Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20598/) (2023)
- [Uncertainty-Aware Decarbonization for Datacenters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02390/) (2024)
- [LACS: Learning-Augmented Algorithms for Carbon-Aware Resource Scaling with Uncertain Demand](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15211/) (2024)
- [PowerSlider: Exploiting Phase Asymmetry for LLM Serving under Demand Response](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.21719/) (2026)
- [Dissecting the Carbon-SLO Tension in Geo-Distributed LLM Serving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14571/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cloud platforms' rapid growth is raising significant concerns about their carbon emissions. To reduce emissions, future cloud platforms will need to increase their reliance on renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, which have zero emissions but are highly unreliable. Unfortunately, today's energy systems effectively mask this unreliability in hardware, which prevents applications from optimizing their carbon-efficiency, or work done per kilogram of carbon emitted. To address this problem, we design an "ecovisor", which virtualizes the energy system and exposes software-defined control of it to applications. An ecovisor enables each application to handle clean energy's unreliability in software based on its own specific requirements. We implement a small-scale ecovisor prototype that virtualizes a physical energy system to enable software-based application-level i) visibility into variable grid carbon-intensity and renewable generation and ii) control of server power usage and battery charging/discharging. We evaluate the ecovisor approach by showing how multiple applications can concurrently exercise their virtual energy system in different ways to better optimize carbon-efficiency based on their specific requirements compared to a general system-wide policy.