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

What about energy-saving servers?

[mind21_98]

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)

Re:What about energy-saving servers?

[Original Replica]

By how much would our energy use go down if we transitioned to servers and network equipment that use less energy?

The first place I would look to conserve energy is turning things off as opposed to standby. Televisions use 23% of their annual electricity while in standby, for VCRs that jumps to 50%. http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/info/documents/pdfs/lbnl-42393.pdf So if we turned monitors and computers and wireless routers and printers etc, completely off when we were not using them the savings would likely be significant. As an added bonus your computer can't be a zombie spam bot when the power is turned off.

Re:What about energy-saving servers?

[jabuzz]

Replace that with a low current LED example RS 180-8495, 2mA and 1.8V or 0.0036W. There is nothing inherently wrong with standby. The problem is that the current designs are as cheap as possible not as low power as possible. You could design a circuit to bring say a TV out of standby with a remote that consumes less than 100mW easily. It would cost more but is perfectly do able.

What is required is legislation to mandate that say standby can consume no more than 1W, then crank it down over the years. Another one would be legislation to for minimum levels of efficiency in power supplies, 85% would be a good starting point, and then crank it up over the years.

meh

[Eternauta3k]

They shouldn't count PCs, they have many more uses than just the internet.
Also, pirates counter global warming...

Low Wattage Laptops

[lobiusmoop]

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.

Re:Low Wattage Laptops

[KKlaus]

Would it? Reminds me of the finding that hybrid cars didn't cut down on fossil fuel consumption as much as many people thought because since they were more efficient, people drove them more. I don't doubt that the computers themselves would use less energy, but I suspect people might then use some of the money that they save from their laptop and use it to keep the house cooler/warmer or whatever.

Not that that would be a bad thing of course, but since people already tend to moderate their electricity usage to what they can (or want) to afford, lowering use in one area must simply see it transfered to another - rather than reducing overall consumption.

Cheers.

Err, so "the internet actually makes up 3.13%

[NoNeeeed]

The total includes the energy used by desktop computers and monitors (which makes up two-thirds of the total)

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.

Re:Ridiculous Units

[dgatwood]

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.

But what does it save?

[redefinescience]

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?

If we just used blade computers and LCD screens

[WillAffleckUW]

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.