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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."
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?
Kevin Smith on Prince
> that's 868 billion kilowatt-hours per year
That's simply 99 gigawatts. "kilowatt-hours per year" is silly.
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