Abstract: With the rapid development of internet technology, the scale and quantity of the data centers is expanding rapidly, and the data centers have become a heavy load. Geographically distributed internet data centers（IDCs）can transfer power load by transferring data workload through data network. This paper established the encapsulated power consumption model of IDCs and analyzed their load regulation potential, based on which, a bi-level economic dispatch model considering the load regulation potential of IDCs was proposed. The sensitivity of the regulation potential of IDCs to the delay bound for processing data load was also analyzed in this paper. The case study showed the application of the proposed model. The simulation results showed that, the economic dispatch considering the load regulation potential of IDCs can reduce operation cost of the power system.Furthermore, the regulation potential of IDCs increases with the increase of the delay bound, and the sensitivity of their regulation potential to the delay bound decreases with the increase of the delay bound.