Patent ID: 8086544

Claim:
A system, comprising: a processing unit, computer readable memory and a computer readable storage medium; first program instructions to collect energy-related data from each of a plurality of different data center sources, the energy-related data comprising power costs, weather data, energy attributes, and cooling costs for each of the plurality of different data center sources; second program instructions to predict projected energy consumption forecasts for processing a compute job at each of the different data center sources as a function of a workload requirement of the compute job and the collected energy-related data, wherein the predicted projected energy consumption forecasts are short-term forecasts having a term of prediction spanning only a life of the compute job; third program instructions to select a data center source location for performing the compute job from the plurality of different data center sources as a function of the predicted projected energy consumption forecasts, feedback data indicative of effectiveness of the predicted projected energy consumption forecasts, and user-defined criteria; and fourth program instructions to calculate actual costs for the selected data center source at a time that the compute job is run, and to provide additional input data to the feedback data indicative of the effectiveness of the predicted projected energy consumption forecasts by comparing the calculated actual costs to the predicted projected energy consumption forecast for the selected data center source; wherein the first, second, third and fourth program instructions are stored on the computer readable storage medium for execution by the processing unit via the computer readable memory.