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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."
By how much would our energy use go down if we transitioned to servers and network equipment that use less energy? 9% seems like an awful lot to me, especially since the US relies on coal for its power production (something that generates lots of CO2)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
This figures.... doesn't the brain use about 30% of the blood oxygen.
They shouldn't count PCs, they have many more uses than just the internet.
Also, pirates counter global warming...
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
From the Article: PCs&Monitors alone use 235b out of the 350b, so it means PC&Monitors will use ~6% US power, something wrong here.
A 550 watt PSU is like a red sportscar or a phat offroad vehicle.
The person who buys it may not fully utilize it.
It just seems "the thing to get".
Something else to consider is the rise of laptops.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is why I think the OLPC project shouldn't be limited to third world countries. These laptops run on only a couple of watts! If more first-world computer users used them for basic surfing instead of 200 watt gaming rigs, much energy/CO2/fossil fuel could be saved I think.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
What about when I read CNN or Slashdot.org through MythBrowser on my 55 inch projection TV?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So "The Internet" makes up 3.13%, not 9.4%
The other 6.27% is from desktop computers. Which may or may not be doing "internet stuff" at any moment in time. Lumping all desktop machines into the count is disingenuous.
It's still a bigger number than I would have thought. And it is a bit of an eye opener to realize how much power all those PCs are using up.
Paul Leader
Don't forget the vacuum cleaners used to clean the carpets in the buildings where the network designers and operators work, or the stereos that play music while people are browsing the net, or the electric lights that let the non-touch-typists see their keyboards at night.
Come on, unless they're somehow able to measure electricity used only while a computer user is actively viewing Internet content it's absurd to count desktop computers in the total. Or, alternatively, it's absurd to attribute the electricity usage to "the Internet". It would be valid to estimate the electricity usage of computers and/or data communications equipment, but to try to pin a number on "the Internet" and include multifunction equipment that serves non-Internet functions is just sloppy.
Come to think of it, there are probably lots of FT-2000s that carry some Internet circuits and some PSTN circuits, how do they account for that? What about the 5Es and DMSs that are carrying modem calls? Do they accurately attribute the percentage of the switch's electrical usage based on the percentage of modem vs voice calls?
While you're right that 868 billion kwh/yr. is about 99 gigawatt-hours per hour, or 99 gigawatts continuous, I think it is moderately more understandable to use the more traditional time-based watt-hour units rather than the continuos watt units, as that's what people are used to seeing on their electric bill. I'd have probably described it as 868 terawatt-hours annually, though, and put 868 billion kwh in parentheses.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
They'll have a hard time refuting this study!
How is that possible? It would mean either the power supply can only supply around 1.3kW, or you're gonna have to hire an electrician to wire in a new 20 amp circuit just for that PC.
A regular 15 amp service at 110V only gives you 1650 watts of power. A PSU rated at 1600W, at "80+" certification (which so far appears to mean they're 80-82% efficient) is going to need 2kW of input power.
Also assuming it draws it at PF 1.0, which isn't unusual since newer power supplies come with power factor correction devices, but if it doesn't, you're going to be close to even a 20 amp circuit from the virtual power (virtual power still means you're handling real currents).
Of course, those who aren't in Japan or North America/South America, do have the benefit of nearly 3kW of power per circuit (using 220V at 13 amps). Might be the power supply that can't be used with 110V...
Oh yeah that internet is sooo much less energy efficent then the manufacture, packaging, storage, shipping, and retail outlets, etc for billions of CDs and DVDs. Oh don't forget to count millions of little spinning DC motors, actuators, signal amplifiers, and laser diodes.
I wonder how much energy is actually SAVED because of the internet, quick example: email. How much energy is used shipping a letter across the country?
How much energy is spend delivering fake moon rocks, Star Trek sets, and other must-have items purchased from eBay?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Switches? Ignition keys? Everybody knows valves are better ways of shutting down tubes.
My wife only has one computer. As do I. So there.
That waste heat from the edge servers is heating homes and thus is an equivalent savings on the energy needed to heat homes.
No, it's not equivalent. It saves *some* (in the winter, not in the summer obviously), but it's most definitely *not* equivalent. A lot of people use gas heat, which is cheaper. Those that use electric heat are almost exclusively using heat pumps -- basically an air conditioner with the hot coils on the inside. Heat pumps expend electricity to *move* heat from outdoors to indoors. Typical coefficient of performance is in the range of 3-4. That means that every watt of electricity used, the heat pump puts 3.5W of heat into your home (the extra 2.5 coming from outside). As a result, running your heat pump is far more efficient than running your server.
(Of course, heat pumps get less efficient as it gets colder outside, just like air conditioners get less efficient as it gets hotter outside. In sufficiently cold climates their coefficient of performance approaches 1, but that doens't reallistically happen until below 0F or so.)
Instead of spending so much to cool them down, we could set up efficient cooling arrays, or even use the heat to store energy in biomass or fuel cells instead.
The problem is that we are unwilling to revisit the basic design concepts.
Why should a "desktop" computer crank out so much heat? My son's Mac Mini doesn't. His next computer won't either.
There are better ways to do this.
Besides, most of our energy use is for: lights (could use LED lighting for 1/20 the energy), washers (heating up all that water), and dryers (if we only got rid of those covenants that didn't let people line dry clothes), and machines that aren't even being used - look at that printer in the office, it's on 24/7 but after office hours, who is printing to it?
For that matter, why are our gigapop Internet networks running 24/7 in most places? Couldn't we have master switches and routers with key servers that were on 24/7, and have the "desktops" turn OFF their monitors and even computers when no one was using it? Turn off LAN segments that aren't in use automagically.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Consider the rapid decline of newspapers - the hard copy as compared to online editions. This results in less energy-intensive and habitat-destructive logging on the one end, less fuel-burning distribution in the middle, and less waste paper to discard or recycle on the other end.
Or consider the decline of the secretarial profession. Thirty years ago every junior executive on up had his or her own secretary. Now all they get is a laptop. It takes much more energy to feed a secretary than a loptop (although the secretary potentially offers greater sexual gratification).
Then consider warehousing. Before pervasive networking enabled just-in-time deliveries to stores and businesses, there was a massive amount of warehousing that's now largely gone away. Those warehouses were usually heated, staffed, required an extra transportation leg to stock, used up real estate, and are now better than 95% obsoleted by our computer network.
The same tech that allows us to avoid warehousing also results in much less mismatch between production and demand. Lots more stuff used to be manufactured - at large energy and materials cost - just to be thrown away when the demand didn't show up.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Al Gore invented the internet... internet ruins the environment... I'm starting to think Al Gore's crusade to prevent global warming should've started with himself.
From http://davidjarvis.ca/essays/solar-power.shtml ...
If the United States of America were to invest the money it spent on the Iraq War ($452,673,414,399) on solar-based energy solutions, they could have met 6% of their annual energy needs. The United States has more than enough rooftop space available for solar panels to meet their electrical needs twice over. Their planned military budget during the next five years is $2.75 trillion ($2,750,000,000,000), or 36% of their electrical usage if spent, instead, on solar panels.
Seems to be fairly common at my office. I think the idea is that having your monitor off looks bad, like you took an excessively long break or you aren't working. Hence people seem to set them so they'll never go off during the work day, even over lunch - so it always looks you just stepped out.
The numbers do suggest that electronic equipment needs to be more efficient.
You don't know that before seeing the full pie chart. How much do other common tasks and equipment fair on this scale?
Internet and Desktop PC-s perform thousands of roles crucial for our daily lives, given how many millions of computers and Internet end-points operate, and how many uses those have, 9% is certainly not that much. We'd definitely have worse carbon emissions if it wasn't for the remote data transmission Internet allows.
Also "needs to be more efficient" can be misleading too just watching the %. Imagine all equipment got twice more efficient overnight. You'd look at the % and see the same numbers. But the absolute numbers have changed.
Also: since we're talking about carbon emissions, we need to factor in other carbon emission sources than electricity production. I imagine as US goes more and more after nuclear plants for their electricity, the carbon footprint of electricity generation will fall, and hence also the effect of devices using electricity will fall.
It's just not simple enough. I'm still not that impressed with the 9%.