The Oil Drum

57 comments on More on Natural Gas

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Twilight on November 21, 2005 - 8:20pm

I'd like to see data showing that the Internet is responsible for significant electrical energy use increases. I'm pretty skeptical. I'm betting it would barely show up compared to other uses of energy, such as the huge numbers of air-conditioned homes and businesses - and that's even if you include the server farms. But I'll keep an open mind!

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flankp on November 21, 2005 - 8:43pm

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/revisions/downloads/computer/ReducingPCPowerC onsumption.pdf

This pretty interesting, and kinda related.

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Leanan on November 22, 2005 - 9:55am

Of course, server farms must be massively air-conditioned, because those computers throw off a lot of heat, and will fry if you let it get too warm. (My office didn't have air-conditioning until we started using a lot of computers. They were willing to let us sweat, but the computers need to be coddled.) Some large server farms have their own power plants.

Some links:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/06/04/BU85569.DTL&type=te ch

Exodus' Bay Area operations consume 12 megawatts of electricity -- as much as 12,000 houses. And data farms typically rely on diesel backup generators in case of a blackout, which generate more pollution than most power plants.

http://www.io.com/~stack/viridian/archive/2001_03_18_viridian-archive.html

A giant server farm can suck up as much energy as a steel mill. Seattle, Austin, and Phoenix are all experiencing over ten percent growth in power demand annually.

http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/37943

Twenty-seven or more Internet ``server farms'' proposed for the area could consume nearly as much electricity as Seattle and greatly magnify Northwest energy problems within two years.