Datacenter level power management with reactive power capping

Abstract

Disclosed techniques relate to managing power within a power distribution system. Power consumption corresponding to devices (e.g., servers) that receive power from an upstream device (e.g., a bus bar) may be monitored (e.g., by a service) to determine when power consumption corresponding to those devices has breached or will likely breach a budgeted threshold corresponding to an amount of power allocated to the upstream device. If the budgeted threshold is breached, or is likely to be breached, the service may initiate operations to distribute power caps for the devices and to initiate a timer. Although distributed, the power caps may be ignored by the devices until they are instructed to enforce the power caps (e.g., upon expiration of the timer). This allows the power consumption of the devices to exceed the budgeted power assigned to the upstream device at least until expiration of the timer while avoiding power outage events.