Calculate the average carbon intensity (I) when running on Oracle cloud

[locomundo]

Now that we are moving to Oracle Cloud, we need to (re) calculate the average carbon intensity in the area where we are running. This is the I part of the SCI formula.

Take as a reference how it was calculated for Equinix before, using ElectricityMaps API: #39.

We're using the US East (Ashburn) region. Unfortunately we don't choose this ourselves, because the credits donated to CNCF are for this region.

[locomundo]

@rossf7 could you edit the issue with the region that we will be using? Thanks!! 🙏

[undercover-fish]

Hello ! If we follow the same process as #39, we only get the average carbon intensity level at a country level, which in our case isn't so ideal. The free tier of Electricity Maps does give access to the zone data (US-MIDA-PJM), but not historical data.

That said, you can download the 2024 daily dataset from their portal (https://portal.electricitymaps.com/datasets/US-MIDA-PJM) and simply average the direct carbon intensity. I got 323.96 gCO₂eq/kWh.

We could eventually scrape live data once a day/week using the free tier API and build our own monthly-updated average, but it’ll take a bit more time to have a value that's general enough.