When it comes to the Internet’s growth, there’s a lot of talk about the digital divide, network neutrality, and the sharing phenomena (Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.) but one thing that rarely attracts the spotlight is the more people who go online, the more energy that’s consumed.
After all, you’ve got tens of millions of computers and modems sucking up electricity, and thousands of data centers that need enormous amounts of electricity to power servers and cooling systems.
So, where does this power come from, and where are these data centers located? An interesting take on the need for power can be found in this month’s issue of Harpers, which looks at Google’s power needs, and some of the aggressive tactics it has taken to get what it needs to build new data centers everywhere from Washington state and Siberia to Dubai and Shanghai.
The articles succinctly goes a long way in explaining Google’s growing lobby presence in Washington, as well as its recent embrace of green energy. One eye-catching factoid from the article is that Google’s U.S. data centers consumed more power in 2006 than all of the television in the U.S.
(As a side note, try connecting a powerbar to your computing space, and then turning everything off when they’re not in use. You’ll be surprised by how much power you’ll save.)
3 Comments
Power (and cooling) are a very real problem for companies operating data centres these days Mark.
Soon, every computer manufacturer, especially those who make servers, will have to build ‘green’ features into every aspect of their hardware. Sun Microsystems has been focusing on green power for some time, knowing that power consumption is also a growing conserve in the enterprise data centre. At 151 Front Street (Toronto), data centre companies are struggling with how to keep power consumption low not only to save cost, but because electricity = heat which means an operator must also worry about cooling down hardware that draws so much power.
Actually, I wrote about something which, by extension, a larger issue than Google alone – but which also impacts such things: File size
http://www.knowprose.com/node/18522
I’ll link back here… this may be worth expanding on in a future post.
Ben: You’re right, “green” servers are going to become hot (pardon the pun) as data centers and Web companies look to reduce costs and, I hope, for good to Mother Earth.