What it Takes to Power the Internet: Quantifying Our Online Obsession

By | November 10th, 2009 3 Comments

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Click on image to englarge

Click on image to englarge

US Infrastructure ran an article last month about how much energy we use to power the Internet. The above is an in interesting representation of what that power consumptions looks like. From updating our Facebook profiles to reading the news to watching last night’s sitcoms, the Internet has subsumed nearly every aspect of our lives.

And behind that ever-increasing demand are large-scale data centers across the globe, computing 1′s and 0′s. “Between 2000 and 2005, the energy consumed by such data centres doubled, both in the US and worldwide,” according to the article’s author. “As more and more people demand more from online media, then more power is needed to power the centres that keep the Internet and servers running.”

The troubling part is that this growth doesn’t seem to be slowing, despite increasingly efficient computational capabilities by servers themselves.

Kelton Research recently conducted a study that found that servers globally waste $25 billion annually. One of the more shocking results from the study is that nearly three-quarters of the respondents it surveyed claimed that 15 percent or more of their servers “aren’t doing anything useful.”

Many organization talk about “greening” their operations by adding solar panels to their roofs or eliminating disposables in their break rooms–and these are commendable endeavors–but learning about these kinds of disparities also points to the fact that corporate environmental stewardship isn’t quite as comprehensive or holistic as it needs to be.

3 Comments

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  • http://www.adinfa.com Philip

    Hi Ashwin,
    This a really interesting series you are putting on.
    The amount of power consumed by data centres is huge and growing – which means a big economic cost to the organisations running them as well as an environmental cost. And those organisations are pretty much every medium to large institution around the world, whether in the private or publci sector.
    Given that, I believe there is a remarkably low level of real awareness among these data centre owners as to where the power is going – in any level of detail. Before you can manage consumption, you need to meter and monitor adequately. Today there relatively little such real-time metering and monitoring is going on but demand is growing.
    And it is not just about reducing consumption in a particular facility, it is about optimising the efficiency of operation: economic drivers for environmental and business benefits.
    Best regards,
    Philip

    • Ashwin Seshagiri

      Hi Philip,

      I think you’re totally right. Your last point about optimizing the efficiency of an entire operation, and how that will produce the drivers for business and environmental benefits is completely spot on. Thanks for your comment.

      —Ashwin

  • http://www.facebook.com/jaimeaurturo James Arthur Smith Romero

    Hopefully as more data centers implement cost saving strategies through optimization and virtualization, competition will lead to consumers (and the environment) also seeing such additional cost savings passed on. CR8Change.org, a boutique web hosting company capitalizing on virtualization was able to save sufficient costs to offset their carbon foot print and now also plants a tree on behalf of every green web hosting account, Every Month. It is feasibly on a small scale. Net impact of the US data center industry taking similar proactive steps to optimize (and ideally adopt a triple bottom line business model) will lay the ground work of greening the internet.