Internet Uses 9.4% of Electricity In the US

ribuck writes "Equipment powering the internet accounts for 9.4% of electricity demand in the U.S., and 5.3% of global demand, according to research by David Sarokin at online pay-for-answers service Uclue. Worldwide, that's 868 billion kilowatt-hours per year. The total includes the energy used by desktop computers and monitors (which makes up two-thirds of the total), plus other energy sinks including modems, routers, data processing equipment and cooling equipment."

Comments

Close to accurate?

[Kazrath]

The information he seems to be pulling from was from the early 2000's. Many things have changed since early 2000 lowering the amount of power needed for the average home PC to operate. Most users in early 2000 were using CRT monitors which use almost 3 times as much power than a modern LCD. If I took the time to research 2000-2002 vs components in the last two years I bet you will see the power consumption of average hardware is probably close to half as much.

Re:Close to accurate?

[trolltalk.com]

Many things have changed since early 2000 lowering the amount of power needed for the average home PC to operate. Most users in early 2000 were using CRT monitors which use almost 3 times as much power than a modern LCD. If I took the time to research 2000-2002 vs components in the last two years I bet you will see the power consumption of average hardware is probably close to half as much.

And the average cpu uses a LOT more juice. So does the average video card. Who's buying all those 550 watt PSUs?

And the average home has more computers in it than it did 5 years ago. Who do you know who has only one computer nowadays?

Ridiculous Units

[John Hasler]

> that's 868 billion kilowatt-hours per year

That's simply 99 gigawatts. "kilowatt-hours per year" is silly.

Re:What about energy-saving servers?

[EaglemanBSA]

I can count 7 LED's on my equipment where I'm sitting that I could pretty much do without...that doesn't really amount to much. LED's don't consume very much power at all (especially the low-power type found in electronics equipment) - you're talking on the order of a couple volts, and in the tens of milliamps. Example: Digikey # 67-1047-ND has a peak voltage of 2 volts, and a max current of 30 mA. At peak conditions, this puts out .06 Watts. Convert that to energy spent in a year, and it amounts to (assuming 8766 hours per year) about a half kilowatt-hour, or 5 cents, if you left that one LED on constantly, at peak, all year. That's 35 cents for all the LED's in my room, a total of 3 and a half kilowatt hours (a typical home burns about a thousand per month, or 12,000 per year). I'll just switch my computer off.

Re:What about energy-saving servers?

[Eivind]

Or a milde variant of the same: Giving a clear grade and mandate displaying the grade prominently.

Already the case in most of Europe if you buy a dishwasher, fridge, washer, drier or lots of other household-appliances.

There's a grade for energy-efficiency, where the average for that kind of appliance is a "C" whereas an appliance that uses 30% less than average would earn an A, and an appliance that wastes 30% more energy than average earns an "F".

The stuff has been a huge success -- to the point where appliances that don't rate atleast a "B" are just not marketable at all.

The standard gets stricter automatically: As more and more people buy the energy-efficient appliances, the *average* efficiency improves, so the energy-usage for a "C" gets adjusted accordingly.

Works like a charm.

Some appliances have more than one grade, they grade efficiency on more than one scale. A dishwasher may have a note on it saying:

Energy consumption: A
Water consumption: B
Wash effectiveness: A
Drying effectiveness: A

So, I don't see why a modern TV couldn't be sold with; "Energy consumption: A", "Standby consumption: B".