Greenpeace report How Clean is Your Cloud? I saw mentioned in 3T magazine news is actually quite interesting reading. This year’s report provides a look at the energy choices some of the largest and fastest growing IT companies. The report analyzes the 14 IT companies and the electricity supply chain in more than 80 data center cases.
The report contains also lots of interesting background information on both IT and telecom energy consumption. I recommend checking it out. Here are some points picked from How Clean is Your Cloud? report:
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo – these global brands and a host of other IT companies are rapidly and fundamentally transforming the way in which we work, communicate, watch movies or TV, listen to music, and share pictures through “the cloud.”
The growth and scale of investment in the cloud is truly mind-blowing, with estimates of a 50-fold increase in the amount of digital information by 2020 and nearly half a trillion in investment in the coming year, all to create and feed our desire for ubiquitous access to infinite information from our computers, phones and other mobile devices, instantly.
The engine that drives the cloud is the data center. Data centers are the factories of the 21st century information age, containing thousands of computers that store and manage our rapidly growing collection of data for consumption at a moment’s notice. Given the energy-intensive nature of maintaining the cloud, access to significant amounts of electricity is a key factor in decisions about where to build these data centers. Industry leaders estimate nearly $450bn US dollars is being spent annually on new data center space.
Since electricity plays a critical role in the cost structure of companies that use the cloud, there have been dramatic strides made in improving the energy efficiency design of the facilities and the thousands of computers that go inside. However, despite significant improvements in efficiency, the exponential growth in cloud computing far outstrips these energy savings.
How much energy is required to power the ever-expanding online world? What percentage of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is attributable to the IT sector? Answers to these questions are very difficult to obtain with any degree of precision, partially due to the sector’s explosive growth, a wide range of devices and energy sources, and rapidly changing technology and business models. The estimates of the IT sector’s carbon footprint performed to date have varied widely in their methodology and scope. One of the most recognized estimates of the IT sector’s footprint was conducted as part of the 2008 SMART 2020 study, which established that the sector is responsible for 2% of global GHG emissions.
The combined electricity demand of the internet/cloud (data centers and telecommunications network) globally in 2007 was approximately 623bn kWh (if the cloud were a country, it would have the fifth largest electricity demand in the world). Based on current projections, the demand for electricity will more than triple to 1,973bn kWh (an amount greater than combined total demand of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil).
The report indicates that, due to the economic downturn and continued energy efficiency and performance improvements, global energy demand from data centers from 2005-2010 increased by 56%. Estimates of data center electricity demand come in at 31GW globally, with an increase of 19% in 2012 alone. At the same time global electricity consumption is otherwise essentially flat due to the global recession is still a staggering rate of growth.
Given the scale of predicted growth, the source of electricity must be factored into a meaningful definition of “green IT”. Energy efficiency alone will, at best, slow the growth of the sector’s footprint. The replacement of dirty sources of electricity with clean renewable sources is still the crucial missing link in the sector’s sustainability efforts according to the report.
The global telecoms sector is also growing rapidly. Rapid growth in use of smart phones and broadband mobile connections mean mobile data traffic in 2011 was eight times the size of the entire internet in 2000. It is estimated that global mobile data traffic grew 133% in 2011, with 597 petabytes of data sent by mobiles every month. In 2011, it is estimated that 6 billion people or 86.7% of the entire global population have mobile telephone subscriptions. By the end of 2012, the number of mobile connected devices is expected to exceed the global population. Electronic devices and the rapidly growing cloud that supports our demand for greater online access are clearly a significant force in driving global energy demand.
What about telecoms in the developing and newly industrialized countries? The report has some details from India (by the way it is expected that India will pass China to become the world’s largest mobile market in terms of subscriptions in 2012). Much of the growth in the Indian telecom sector is from India’s rural and semi-urban areas. By 2012, India is likely to have 200 million rural telecom connections at a penetration rate of 25%. Out of the existing 400,000 mobile towers, over 70% exist in rural and semi-urban areas where either grid-connected electricity is not available or the electricity supply is irregular. As a result, mobile towers and, increasingly, grid-connected towers in these areas rely on diesel generators to power their network operations. The consumption of diesel by the telecoms sector currently stands at a staggering 3bn liters annually, second only to the railways in India.
What is the case on other developing and newly industrialized countries? I don’t actually know.
NOTE: Please note that that many figures given on the report are just estimates based on quite little actual data, so they might be somewhat off the actual figures. Given the source of the report I would quess that if the figures are off, they are most probably off to direction so that the environmental effect looks bigger than it actually is.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 3 benefits of using a green data center
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2012/12/green-data-center-top-3.html
According to the independent environmental technology news site, the top 3 benefits are as follows:
1. Turning off unused or dead servers.
2. Virtualization.
3. Delaying capital expenditures.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The International Energy Agency has published their views on the Nordic energy solutions. IEA regarded as Danish, Finnish, Iceland, Norway and Sweden the lead in the global transformation towards a low-carbon energy systems.
IEA report assesses how the Nordic countries can work together to achieve ambitious national emission reduction targets by 2050 and achieving carbon-neutral energy system, the first region in the world.
This is not going to be easy, the IEA says. Carbon neutral energy system will require completely carbon-free power generation in 2050.
This in turn calls for more investment in power grids so that wind power is obtained at the same time grown to 25 percent. The Nordic hydropower resources are more valuable in controlling the northern European electricity system.
Traffic emissions should be reduced by the year 2050, more than in other sectors.
Source: http://www.3t.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/talous/iea_pohjoismaat_hiilineutraalin_energian_edellakavijoita
Tomi Engdahl says:
For server cabinets, gray is the new black
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-21/issue-1/features/for-server-cabinets-gray-is-the-new-black.html
The pressure to cut power consumption in data centers is leading many facilities managers to get more creative. Having raised temperature and lowered power consumption, these managers are still looking for savings.
Every data center has looked at the issue of lighting. In the United States, electric lighting is blamed for 25 percent of the national power consumption. Inside a data center it is a little less than that, but the figure is still 3 to 5 percent of the power costs for a data center facility.
It takes more light to illuminate a server room than an operating-room theater. The reason for this is the way light is absorbed by color. The light reflective value (LRV) of a color determines how much light the color absorbs. Black reflects as little as 5 percent of the ambient light while gray-white reflects up to 80 percent of the light.
Changing the color of the server cabinets from black to gray or even white can make a significant difference to the amount of available light in a room and the cost of lighting that room.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What to do when data center temperatures rise during a cooling system failure?
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/january/data-center-temperature-rise.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cities’ Heat Can Affect Temperatures 1000+ Miles Away
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/01/28/0555236/cities-heat-can-affect-temperatures-1000-miles-away
“The released heat is changing temperatures in areas more than 1,000 miles away (1609 kilometers). It is warming parts of North America by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) and northern Asia by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), while cooling areas of Europe by a similar amount, scientists report in the journal Nature Climate Change. The released heat (dubbed waste heat), it seems, is changing atmospheric circulation”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Global warming less extreme than feared?
http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/Newsarticle/Global_warming_less_extreme_than_feared/1253983344535/p1177315753918?WT.ac=forside_nyhet
Policymakers are attempting to contain global warming at less than 2°C. New estimates from a Norwegian project on climate calculations indicate this target may be more attainable than many experts have feared.
After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise.
If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at our current rate, we risk doubling that atmospheric CO2 level in roughly 2050.
Uncertainties about the overall results of feedback mechanisms make it very difficult to predict just how much of the rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature is due to manmade emissions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the climate sensitivity to doubled atmospheric CO2 levels is probably between 2°C and 4.5°C, with the most probable being 3°C of warming.
In the Norwegian project, however, researchers have arrived at an estimate of 1.9°C as the most likely level of warming.
they determine with 90% probability that global warming from a doubling of CO2 concentration would lie between 1.2°C and 2.9°C.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clean power generation makes for a green environment
http://www.eetimes.com/design/smart-energy-design/4406681/Clean-power-generation-makes-for-a-green-environment
The cost of electricity around the world has steadily been rising for over the past 40 years. With the exception of a few periods of flat rates and a handful of minor downwards, the cost of electricity has risen almost every year since 1970.
The three main factors that will drive rates higher in the coming decade are:
. The required Infrastructure Investment
. The Compound Pricing Effect
. Increasing Environmental Regulations
The combination of these factors will likely result in residential electricity price increases with the potential for significant price hikes in later years.
Utility companies are corporations with investors and shareholders just like any other publicly traded company. They are expected to earn returns for their investors in the form of profits and as their costs rise, they will pass on these costs to their customers.
Infrastructure Investment has been lagging behind growth for quite some time. The electric utility industry is one of the most capital intensive sectors and capital costs related to improving the grid factor heavily in determining retail electricity prices.
To compensate for decades of underinvestment, utilities have begun reinvesting in their core infrastructure including building new power plants and reinforcing the delivery system, specifically, the high-voltage transmission lines, substations, and distribution systems which deliver electricity to the home.
Increasing Environmental Regulations are the third significant driving factor for higher electricity rates. Most electric utilities are subject to environment rules along with air and water quality requirements. While there is plenty of evidence to support that the requirements are, indeed, resulting in cleaner emissions and better environmental standards, they come at a significant cost. As the utilities enter more phases of emissions reductions, the costs will be reflected in customer electric bills, and will have to be spread equitably among all the customers on the grid.
As a result, solar arrays are going up on houses, schools, industrial buildings, parking lots and anyplace there is a clear view of the sun. Solar farms are being installed in strategic areas where the climate is conducive for sun power generation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Energy and the World in 2040
http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2012/12/11/energy-and-the-world-in-2040/
Global energy demand will be about 35 percent higher in 2040 than today. The world’s population is expected to approach nearly 9 billion people (from roughly 7 billion today) and global economic output is expected to more than double. But improvements in efficiency across economies worldwide will limit the rise in energy demand and will help curb emissions.
Energy-saving practices and technologies in countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – including those in North America and Europe – will keep energy use at essentially the same level, even as OECD economic output grows 80 percent.
The more widespread use of energy-efficient technologies and less carbon-intensive energy sources will result in a 20 percent drop in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in OECD nations. And overall the growth rate of global CO2 emissions will be about half that of global energy demand.
Electricity demand will grow by about 85 percent. Growing electricity demand will remain the biggest driver of global energy needs and power generation will account for 40 percent of global energy use by 2040.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Climate watch: 2012 figures confirm global warming still stalled
‘One more year of numbers not significant’, says NASA
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/16/2012_temperature_figures/
The two major US temperature databases have released their consolidated results for 2012, and as had been expected, global warming has failed to occur for approximately the fourteenth year running. One of the US agencies downgraded 2012 to tenth-hottest ever: it had been on track to rank as 9th hottest.
However one slices it, the world has not warmed up noticeably since 1998 or so, though all three datasets show noticeable warming in the two decades prior to that.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Climate shocker: Carry on as we are until 2050, planet will be FINE
Doubled CO2 means just 1.9°C warming, say Norwegian researchers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/25/norwegian_co2_warming_shocker/
New research produced by a Norwegian government project, described as “truly sensational” by independent experts, indicates that humanity’s carbon emissions produce far less global warming than had been thought: so much so that there is no danger of producing warming beyond the IPCC upper safe limit of 2°C for many decades.
“In our project we have worked on finding out the overall effect of all known feedback mechanisms,”
“We used a method that enables us to view the entire earth as one giant ‘laboratory’ where humankind has been conducting a collective experiment through our emissions of greenhouse gases and particulates, deforestation, and other activities that affect climate.”
Berntsen and his colleagues’ results derive in large part from taking account of the way that global temperatures have remained flat for the last fourteen years or thereabouts, instead of climbing as they ought to have done with increased carbon levels.
“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity,” explains the prof.
“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Skynet Could Help Save the Planet
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=how-skynet-could-help-save-the-plan-13-02-24
Machine-to-machine communication offers an opportunity to make the modern world more energy efficient. David Biello reports
Machines sharing information with other machines is more efficient than having one of us humans gumming up the works. But could a smart grid or precision farming, in which the machines inform each other and make subsequent decisions, significantly reduce energy use and, thus, greenhouse gas pollution?
A new report from eclectic billionaire Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room says yes. The report claims potential savings of nearly 20 percent of current global emissions, or more than 9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The changes could come quickly too, with pollution down 1.5 billion metric tons by the end of the decade.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Success in energy management starts with setting goals
http://www.controleng.com/home/single-article/success-in-energy-management-starts-with-setting-goals/dbaa85f1f2451218ab572e5fb5661048.html
Setting goals is easy; reaching them often proves much more difficult.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Continuous parallelisation based on Moore’s Law, application of wastes energy. The new millennium, the amount of data handled old-world instruments.
About 42 percent of CIOs do not know how much energy consumed by their IT systems costs. More than 11 percent have never even thought of that, more specifically, IT would consume energy.
In return, about seven per cent from the same gang is responsible for the business it’s energy to eat and be on a separate bill that includes the IT budget.
The same report, it-in key industries such as banks, IT may form 75 per cent of the entire company’s electricity bill.
The figures were on display Jukka Manner presentation Aalto University this past week. Manner is a professor of communications, and well-known, among other things, that will keep it’s current form the use of absurd wasting.
“My guess is perceived to think that it is the worst thing that man has invented,”
According to him, instead of the cost of the systems should definitely engage life-cycle costs.
1600 euro-priced pizza box server electricity use its three-year life time may vary depending on the energy efficiency of electricity at the current price from 1600 to 2600 euros.
The question is largely on how well the server produced by the waste heat is recovered. Recovery of costs, but the investment will be quickly recovered.
A lot can be done with hardware and software optimization.
Similarly, the response times of real need for the corresponding adjustment. Everything is not needed is a milliseconds.
But whatever the means are not, they tend to stay within the limits of current technology only for decorating the pig with lipstick. EMC: According to the amount of data in the year 2020 up to 5000 per cent higher than in 2012.
Group of Japan alone ip-router traffic (without any of the calculated change, such as the status of the unit consumption) in 2020, absorb the same amount of energy as the country’s power generation was in 2005.
And if you study this tulema would be even 50 percent of it going wrong and grossly exaggerates, the results still frightening.
Namikin that this is the case, if the present, based on processor cores parallelisation of a power-up, will continue to be the basis for all development. Routers are computers with multi core CPUs.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/blogit/uutiskommentti/hyvasti++moore+ja+tuhlarilakisi/a883517?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-02032013&
Tomi says:
Information and communications technology consumes estimates that 10-20 per cent of Finland’s electricity in the next decade
- The digital industry is growing all the time in Finland. At the same time remains a need for faster networks, more computing and storage, says Aalto University’s computer network engineering professor Jukka Manner .
Source: http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/ict/yle+itala+rohmuaa+suomen+sahkoa+ydinvoimalan+verran+2020luvulla/a883229
Tomi says:
Yle: in the 2020s IT will eat 10 to 20 percent of the electricity in Finland
“The digital industry is growing all the time in Finland. At the same time remains a need for faster networks, more computing and storage,” says Aalto University’s computer network engineering professor Jukka Manner.
For example, Google expand the server to the center of Hamina. Its electricity consumption are not told to the public, but the city of Hamina service and construction side of the electricity consumption increased by 79 GWh 116 GWh in 2011. A growth of 47 per cent of Google’s launched its servers.
Continental estimates that the IT industry is already spending more than ten per cent of Finland’s energy. Consumption in the next decade would be 10-20 per cent
Mantere compares the IT industry for vehicles whose emissions are strictly regulated. If the computer uses cheap electricity unnecessarily, even though it should be regulated by law.
Motiva’s energy consumption by data centers doubled in Finland during 2005-2010. Data centers do use the electricity in Finland only 0.5 to 1.5 percent.
The entire IT sector energy use is difficult to estimate
Computer, electronic and optical products manufacturing class consumption was 349 GWh in the year 2011, which was 0.8 per cent of energy consumption in Finland.
Source: http://m.tietoviikko.fi/Uutiset/Yle%3A+2020-luvulla+it-ala+sy%C3%B6+10-20+prosenttia+Suomen+s%C3%A4hk%C3%B6st%C3%A4
Tomi says:
01/03/2013 at 6:41 | Updated 03/01/2013 7:03 PM
“Facts table” – the IT sector to hoarding as much electricity as nuclear power plant in the 2020s
Information and communication technology is the desired impetus to the fight against climate change. According to the expert energy efficiency of ICT services is, however, entirely in its infancy. The industry can gobble up to 10 – 20 per cent of Finland’s electricity in the next decade.
- The need for faster networks, more calculating, much more storage space. Growth charts are in thousands of percentage of the end of the decade, says Information Network Engineering, Professor Jukka Manner from Aalto University.
The ICT services is already a super power user, and continues to grow. For example, Internet giant Google is currently expanding its server center in Hamina. Its electricity consumption are not told to the public.
According to the statistics of Hamina in the service and construction sector, where the data is calculated hall, electricity consumption jumped in Hamina 79 GWh 116 GWh in 2011. A growth of 47 per cent. Rise to more than 2 000 detached houses the annual energy consumption.
“Facts table”
Professor Jukka Manner, says that the ICT sector represented ten per cent to the British electricity consumption in 2007. It is estimated that global energy consumption took tenth of ICT services in 2010. Climate emissions ICT to produce 2 to 3 per cent, but the trend is upward.
- Fact should now be put on the table. Globally, there is by 10 per cent, and in Finland it is even bigger. Or a substantial part of the total energy consumption in Finland goes to the IT sector.
Electricity could in turn saves the hardware and software optimization of up to several tens of percent. For example, the state server centers are rushing for 24 hours a day, even though the state’s network services is little demand at night.
Mantere says that IT uses electricity in not optimized way, because it’s so cheap.
Source: http://yle.fi/uutiset/faktat_poytaan_-_it-ala_voi_rohmuta_ydinvoimalan_verran_sahkoa_2020-luvulla/6518689
Tomi Engdahl says:
World+Dog don’t care about climate change, never have done
It’s the economy, stupid – and it always was
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/27/17_years_of_surveys_people_dont_care_about_climate_change/
Seventeen years of continuous surveys covering countries around the world show that people not only do not care about climate change today – understandably prioritising economic misery – they also did not care about climate change even back when times were good.
The economy ranked highest in concern in 15 countries, followed by health care in eight, education in six, poverty in two, and terrorism and crime in one country each.
Essentially, the environment joins terrorism and immigration on the list of subjects nobody has ever been able to really give a toss about
The NORC spokespersons add that decades of climate alarmism have had basically no effect on people’s attitude around the world:
The latest surveys were completed in 2010. Similar surveys have been conducted since 1993, and little change has been noted on people’s concern for climate change … widespread public support for current action on the issue will represent a major shift in attitude.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US lawmaker blames bicycle breath for global warming gas
‘Increased heart rate and respiration’ pollutes Washington
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/bicyclists_as_polluters/
Perhaps Orcutt should take a gander at a study by the European Cyclists Federation, which determined that cyclists produce 21 grams of CO2 per passenger per kilometer travelled, as BikePortland.org has pointed out, including the CO2 involved in the production of the food fueling the cyclist. A passenger car’s overall carbon footprint per passenger per kilometer, according to the study, stands at 271 grams “based on short trips similar to those a bicycle could make.”
Although there is general consensus among climate scientists that the radiative forcing caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 is one component in the overall global temperature rise since such records have been reliably kept
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Green Grid Publishes New Data Center Recycling Metric
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/03/07/0116246/the-green-grid-publishes-new-data-center-recycling-metric
“The Green Grid, which helped popularize metrics for minimizing wasted electricity in data centers, has developed a new method for cutting down on wasted electronics as old servers and other equipment reach their inevitable retirement. The Electronics Disposal Efficiency metric is designed to help minimize electronic waste, specifically servers and other enterprise hardware.”
Green Grid Publishes Recycling Metric
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/green-grid-publishes-recycling-metric/
Concerned that manufacturers may trash servers and other equipment at the end of their useful life, the Green Grid develops a reuse and recycling metric.
The Electronics Disposal Efficiency metric is designed to help minimize electronic waste, specifically servers and other enterprise hardware. It will take a cue from other organizations, including the Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative. The Green Grid is trying to build on established regulations that govern the disposal of consumer electronics such as televisions, including the rules governing Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) within the EU.
Green Grid decided that recyclers need to be ISO 14001 certified, on top of being audited “to the end of the line”—presumably to ensure that materials were being recycled and not discarded somewhere along the recycling chain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amplified Greenhouse Effect Shifts North’s Growing Seasons
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/growth-shift.html
Vegetation growth at Earth’s northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study based on a 30-year record of land surface and newly improved satellite data sets.
“Higher northern latitudes are getting warmer, Arctic sea ice and the duration of snow cover are diminishing, the growing season is getting longer and plants are growing more,” said Ranga Myneni of Boston University’s Department of Earth and Environment. “In the north’s Arctic and boreal areas, the characteristics of the seasons are changing, leading to great disruptions for plants and related ecosystems.”
Also, warmer temperatures alone in the boreal zone do not guarantee more plant growth, which also depends on the availability of water and sunlight.
“Satellite data identify areas in the boreal zone that are warmer and dryer and other areas that are warmer and wetter,” said co-author Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Only the warmer and wetter areas support more growth.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Schneider Electric lauded for green energy management
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/january/schneider-recognized-for-energy-management.html
Schneider Electric, a specialist in energy management for data centers, announced that independent analyst firm Verdantix has named the company a technology leader in its 2013 Green Quadrant Energy Management Software report.
The strong showing in the report resulted from evaluations of Schneider Electric’s “Resource Advisor” and “Energy Operation” software applications. Both are key elements of Schneider’s StruxureWare, the company’s platform of integrated software applications designed to help customers maximize business performance and be more efficient and sustainable. The newest StruxureWare software suites specifically address key market segments such as data center, grid, healthcare and water, with each suite delivering integration for third-party offers and legacy systems, as well as a scalable platform and a consistent user experience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fail-safe Power Supervision in Mission-Critical Systems
http://www.edn.com/design/sensors/4409645/Fail-safe-Power-Supervision-in-Mission-Critical-Systems
Power supervision plays a critical role in mission-critical communication systems such as routers, switches, storage systems and servers. Due to the continued expansion of the Internet, global IP traffic has increased eightfold over the past 5 years.
Moving forward, global IP traffic will continue to grow at an alarming rate driven by mobile devices and IP video, with demand expected to surpass the zettabyte threshold as soon as 2016.
These trends in communications systems have resulted in significant power supervision design challenges for engineers to solve. This article will detail these design challenges, discuss the traditional solutions and how they are falling short of next generation requirements. It will then explore how designers of mission-critical systems can more efficiently deal with the major trends in the industry including increasing processing power (“Moore’s law”), energy efficiency (“green”), reliability (“always on”) and design efficiency (“do more with less”).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Earth Hour Is a Colossal Waste of Time—and Energy
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2013/03/earth_hour_is_all_wrong_we_need_more_electricity_not_less.html
On the evening of March 23, 1.3 billion people will go without light at 8:30—and at 9:30, and at 10:30, and for the rest of the night—just like every other night of the year. With no access to electricity, darkness after sunset is a constant reality for these people.
At the same time, another 1 billion people will participate in “Earth Hour” by turning off their lights from 8:30-9:30.
The organizers say that they are providing a way to demonstrate one’s desire to “do something” about global warming. But the reality is that Earth Hour teaches all the wrong lessens, and it actually increases CO2 emissions. Its vain symbolism reveals exactly what is wrong with today’s feel-good environmentalism.
If switching off the lights for one hour per year really were beneficial, why would we not do it for the other 8,759?
Hypothetically, switching off the lights for an hour would cut CO2 emissions from power plants around the world. But, even if everyone in the entire world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO2 reduction, it would be the equivalent of China pausing its CO2 emissions for less than four minutes. In fact, Earth Hour will cause emissions to increase.
As the United Kingdom’s National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions. Moreover, during Earth Hour, any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward.
Tomi says:
Apple Plans to Go Entirely Green: Datacenters Lead the Way
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Power_Products/Power_Management/Apple_Plans_to_Go_Entirely_Green_Datacenters_Lead_the_Way.aspx
Apple is making tremendous advances in reaching its goal of 100% reliance on renewable energy: all of the company’s datacenters are now powered by solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal energy. The overall goal is to convert every facility to green energy.
CEO Tim Cook’s plan for achieving net-zero dirty energy usage abides by three principles: it must add to what local regulations require, the clean energy produced must dislodge dirtier forms of energy in the local power grid in order to better serve the community, and the energy must be accounted for to prevent double counting.
Tomi says:
Powering our facilities with clean, renewable energy.
http://www.apple.com/environment/renewable-energy/
We’ve dramatically reduced the environmental impact of our corporate facilities and the data centers that provide online services to our customers. And we continue to invest in ways to achieve 100 percent renewable energy and lessen our carbon footprint even more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT and comms power consumption could surge in 2013
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/02/need_a_greener_internet/
An Italian researcher has predicted that the global Internet’s power demands will surge by 19 percent during 2013, compared to 2012 – and that over time, such ballooning electricity demand will become unsustainable.
In a paper published in Science last week, University of Catania researcher Diego Reforgiato urges more attention be paid to reducing unnecessary power consumption. He nominates smarter standby modes, dynamic bandwidth scaling and data centre CPU throttling as offering the most promise
Working with a grant from Telecom Italia on its Green Home Gateway project, Reforgiato says better management of sleep times would dramatically improve the energy efficiency of the millions of home gateways now deployed. At the micro level, he suggests that users in Italy would also save €20 on their power bills annually – something that would be reflected world-wide, since home gateways are all pretty much functionally identical.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Energy Use From Wireless Networks Will Dwarf Data Center Use By 2015
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/04/09/0218214/energy-use-from-wireless-networks-will-dwarf-data-center-use-by-2015
“New research (PDF) from an Australian university argues that increased carbon emissions from powering data centers aren’t the biggest environmental threat from the growth of cloud computing. Instead, the problem is the Wi-Fi and cellular networks increasingly used to access cloud services. By 2015, the energy used to run data centers will be a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared to the energy used to power wireless access to services”
THE POWER OF WIRELESS CLOUD
An analysis of the energy consumption
of wireless cloud
http://www.ceet.unimelb.edu.au/pdfs/ceet_white_paper_wireless_cloud.pdf
Cloud’s real ecological timebomb: Wireless, not data centres
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/458439/cloud_real_ecological_timebomb_wireless_data_centres/
By 2015, the energy used to run data centres will be a “drop in the ocean”, compared to the wireless networks used to access cloud services
a new report from the University of Melbourne says that the real sustainability threat comes not from the growing demand for data centres to house cloud-ready infrastructure, but from the rising use of cellular and Wi-Fi networks to access cloud services.
A 2012 report produced by Greenpeace titled How Clean is Your Cloud?
The report cited an estimate that nearly US$450 billion was being spent annually on new data centre space that that data centre demand was consuming 31 gigawatts of electricity, with an increase of 19 per cent in 2012.
However, by 2015, the energy used to run data centres will be a “drop in the ocean”, compared to the wireless networks used to access cloud services,
“There is a significant emerging convergence between cloud computing and wireless communication, providing consumers with access to a vast array of cloud applications and services with the convenience of anywhere, anytime, any network functionality from the device of their choice,” states the report, The Power of Wireless Cloud.
The report predicts that by 2015 energy consumption associated with ‘wireless cloud’ will reach 43 terawatt-hours, compared to 9.2 terawatt-hours in 2012.
Data centres will comprise only 9 per cent on this increased energy consumption, compared to up to 90 per cent for wireless access.
“The trend towards wireless is the real problem, and the networks are to blame,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How fiber can help make your network “greener”
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-21/issue-4/features/how-fiber-can-help-make-your-network-greener.html?cmpid=$trackid
Lower energy consumption, reduced waste and sustainable architectures are all characteristics that make fiber infrastructure an environmentally advantageous choice.
in 2010 roughly 41 percent of total U.S. energy consumption was used in buildings
Taking a global perspective, the buildings sector accounts for 7 percent of global energy consumption.
Increasingly information technology (IT) departments are being asked to make their networks “greener” as part of the overall push toward sustainability in business.
Gartner analysts report that IT activity accounts for about 2 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions–about the same as produced by the entire aviation industry.
While the goal to improve the sustainability of networks is both real and ambitious, when it comes to structured cabling, best practices for achieving sustainable networks are still being defined.
From the perspective of the TIA’s Fiber Optics Technology Consortium (FOTC; formerly the Fiber Optics LAN Section), the good news is that there are many characteristics inherent to optical fiber that make it suitable for supporting building sustainable structured cabling.
How fiber can help
Optical fiber-based networks work well with the objectives outlined in the STEP program because they have inherent characteristics that support a move toward networks that reduce energy consumption, reduce waste and lower the TCO for a network through longer product lifecycles.
Optical networks lower energy consumption. One of the benefits of deploying an optical network is that they consume less energy than copper-based systems, not just initially, but also over the life of the network. Recent innovations in copper chipsets for 10GBase-T applications have brought power consumption for copper networks down to between 1 and 2 watts over shorter distances and about 3.5W at full 100-meter reach capability. Fiber networks, in comparison, may use less than 1W to transmit the 10-GbE signal over the IEEE specs of 300 meters for Om3 or 400 meters for Om4 fiber. Over time the power savings from a fiber-based network can be meaningful, especially in data center applications where there may be thousands of connections. Lower energy consumption also can help reduce CO2 emissions.
Because fiber networks use less energy to power the signal, they also generate less heat–and therefore require less cooling.
Optical fiber cables typically have a longer infrastructure lifespan,
it has a potential working life of 25-plus years without recabling
An all-fiber LAN can allow for significant savings in building construction square footage required for telecommunications and related materials.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Bitcoin Mining a Real-World Environmental Problem?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/04/14/2234251/is-bitcoin-mining-a-real-world-environmental-problem
“Mark Gimein points out that Bitcoing mining uses a lot of power, enough that it is a real world problem: ‘About 982 megawatt hours a day, to be exact. That’s enough to power roughly 31,000 US homes, or about half a Large Hadron Collider. If the dreams of Bitcoin proponents are realized, and the currency is adopted for widespread commerce, the power demands of bitcoin mines would rise dramatically.”
“About 982 megawatt hours a day, to be exact”
982 MWh/day / 24 = ~41 megawatts
So people are paying real money for electricity to then convert it to fake currency?
Correct. You can use a bitcoin exchange to convert real money into fake currency as well.
Virtual Bitcoin Mining Is a Real-World Environmental Disaster
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html
Here’s a puzzle: How can a virtual currency, existing in digital form on computer hard drives, demand real power and real fuel, and have real-world environmental costs? If you’re struggling to think of an answer, welcome to the world of “Bitcoin mining.”
Mining is a process in which powerful computers create Bitcoins by solving processor-intensive equations. The idea is to keep the supply of Bitcoins from multiplying too quickly. Bitcoin mining, like mining of precious metals, is supposed to be arduous. By design, the more miners there are, the more processing power is required to mint new coins.
Blockchain.info, a site that tracks data on Bitcoin mining, estimates that in just the last 24 hours, miners used about $147,000 of electricity just to run their hardware, assuming an average price of 15 cents per kilowatt hour
That, of course, is in addition to the money devoted to buying and building the mining rigs. The site estimates the profits from the day of mining at about $681,000, based on the current value of Bitcoins. So mining, at least for the moment, is a lucrative business.
The trade-off here is that as virtual value is created, real-world value is used up. About 982 megawatt hours a day, to be exact.
Jennie Bowell says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
88 Acres
How Microsoft Quietly Built the City of the Future
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/stories/88acres/88-acres-how-microsoft-quietly-built-the-city-of-the-future-chapter-1.aspx
A small, covert team of engineers at Microsoft cast aside suggestions that the company spend US$60 million to turn its 500-acre headquarters into a smart campus to achieve energy savings and other efficiency gains. Instead, applying an “Internet of Things meets Big Data” approach, the team invented a data-driven software solution that is slashing the cost of operating the campus’ 125 buildings. The software, which is saving Microsoft millions of dollars, has been so successful that the company and its partners are now helping building managers across the world deploy the same solution. And with commercial buildings consuming an estimated 40 percent of the world’s total energy, the potential is huge.
Olene Hayhurst says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
A Smarter Algorithm Could Cut Energy Use in Data Centers by 35 Percent
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513656/a-smarter-algorithm-could-cut-energy-use-in-data-centers-by-35-percent/
Storing video and other files more intelligently reduces the demand on servers in a data center.
New research suggests that data centers could significantly cut their electricity usage simply by storing fewer copies of files, especially videos.
“This approach is a very promising way to improve the efficiency of data centers,” says Emina Soljanin, a researcher at Bell Labs who participated in the work.
So-called storage area networks within data center servers rely on a tremendous amount of redundancy to make sure that downloading videos and other content is a smooth, unbroken experience for consumers.
The new technology, called network coding, cuts way back on the redundancy without sacrificing the smooth experience.
Médard’s group previously proposed a similar technique for boosting wireless bandwidth
Between the electricity needed to power computers and the air conditioning required to cool them, data centers worldwide consume so much energy that by 2020 they will cause more greenhouse-gas emissions than global air travel, according to the consulting firm McKinsey.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Letting Everyone See How Much Data-Center Power It Consumes
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/04/18/2221239/facebook-letting-everyone-see-how-much-data-center-power-it-consumes
“Facebook has added real-time dashboards for measuring the efficiency of its data centers’ internal power and water use.”
Facebook Provides Near-Real-Time PUE Data for Its Data Centers
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/facebook-provides-near-real-time-pue-data-for-its-data-centers/
Two dashboards monitor the company’s Prineville, Ore. and Forest City, N.C. data centers, measuring both the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness of those facilities, in addition to the ambient temperature and humidity. (Facebook pages for the Prineville and Forest City facilities are available, while the respective dashboards can be viewed here and here.)
Prineville, OR Data Center
https://www.facebook.com/prinevilleDataCenter/app_399244020173259
Forest City, NC Data Center
https://www.facebook.com/ForestCityDataCenter/app_288655784601722
Tomi Engdahl says:
The fast-growing energy source set to replace oil: Yes, it’s COAL
Renewables have had virtually no effect on CO2 emissions
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/19/energy_use_co2_twenty_years_ago/
The emergence of renewable power has had essentially no effect on the amount of carbon emissions involved in energy generation, according to a new report.
The ESCII stood at 2.39 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of oil equivalent (tCO2/toe)[*] in 1990, and had barely moved by 2010, holding at 2.37 tCO2/toe.
Various factors have been in play to reduce the amount of carbon emissions involved in energy generation over the last 20 years
Despite their high profile and burdensome expense, however, newer renewable technologies (wind, solar and biofuel) are still not making any significant impact as they don’t produce very much energy.
IEA expects coal to supplant oil as the world’s most-used energy source in 2017 on current trends.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Where’s your inefficiency?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/power-points/4412315/Where-s-your-inefficiency-
Efficiency and its complement of inefficiency are hot topics both in the general media and in the nitty-gritty of engineering design.
Statistics calling out power use and therefore room for improvement are tossed around like paper clips; I’ve seen statements such as “60% of the power in the US is consumed by electric motors,” “50% is used in transportation,” and “25% is used for home heating and cooling.”
But the numbers do point to an issue: how do you actually determine the sources of power use (and loss) in your design. If it’s an AC/DC supply supporting a fairly steady load, you can measure the AC line current and voltage, along with the load current and voltage, using a combination of basic transducers, instrumentation, and current-sense resistors, among various approaches.
Things get a little more difficult when the load or system has pulsed modes, PWM, transient operation, quiescent states, and more. Yes, there’s instrumentation and techniques that will greatly help, but you still have to know more about your system’s operation characteristics to make sure your data is representative and valid.
What about when you leave the electrical/electronic world? When you try to determine optical-related efficiency, you’re in for a lot of surprises unless you have some experience and guidance. How do you measure the efficiency of an LED, whether individually or in an array? You could measure the DC power input and the heat given off – how would you do that?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will new lighting technology save energy?
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Optoelectronics/LEDs/Will_new_lighting_technology_save_energy.aspx
Lighting needs are said to use about 20% of our global energy production. So the use of CFL and LEDs can lead to fewer coal-fired power plants and that directly reduces the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, which is good for the atmosphere.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says that in 2011 about 461 billion kWh of electricity were used for lighting by residential and commercial sectors, which equaled about 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption
A simplistic comparison states that the LED has a life-span of 50,000 h vs 1,200 h for incandescent bulbs (and 8,000 h for CFLs). Additionally, an incandescent bulb producing the typical 800 lumens requires 60-W of power while a CFL uses 13 to 15 W, and an LED lamp needs only 6 to 8 W. For example, the environmental impact (CO2 emissions) of 30 incandescent bulbs (4500 lbs CO2/year) is about 10X more than the same number of LED bulbs (451 lbs/year). These are promising numbers if the comparison holds up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unburnable Carbon 2013:
Wasted capital and stranded assets
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/publications/Policy/docs/PB-unburnable-carbon-2013-wasted-capital-stranded-assets.pdf
The IEA is conducting a special study
on the climate-energy nexus which will consider the
carbon bubble.
In 2010, governments confirmed in the Cancun
Agreement that emissions should be reduced to avoid
a rise in global average temperature of more than
2°C above pre-industrial levels
IEA showed that the carbon budget for a 2°C scenario
would be around 565 – 886 billion tonnes (Gt) of
carbon dioxide (CO2) to 2050.
This budget, however, is only a fraction of the carbon
embedded in the world’s indicated fossil fuel reserves,
which amount to 2,860GtCO2. A precautionary
approach means only 20% of total fossil fuel reserves
can be burnt to 2050. As a result the global economy
already faces the prospect of assets becoming
stranded, with the problem only likely to get worse
if current investment trends continue – in effect,
a carbon bubble.
The scale of this carbon budget deficit poses a major
risk for investors. They need to understand that 60 -
80% of coal, oil and gas reserves of listed firms
are unburnable.
The 200 fossil fuel companies analysed here have
a market value of $4trn and debt of $1.5trn. Asset
owners and investment analysts have begun
to investigate the implications of unburnable
carbon. Analysis from HSBC suggests that equity
valuations could be reduced by 40 – 60% in a low
emissions scenario. In parallel, the bonds of fossil
fuel companies could also be vulnerable to ratings
downgrades
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oslo Needs Your Garbage
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/02/009251/oslo-needs-your-garbage
“Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn. The problem is not unique to Oslo”
Tomi says:
Solar outlet gives power from your windows
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/solar-outlet-gives-power-from-your-windows/18622
Your window might be an unlikely place to plug-in your smartphone, but a team of designers has made that possible with a novel take on the portable electronics charger.
Industrial designers Kyuho Song & Boa Oh created a solar charger called the Window Socket that suctions onto glass and converts solar energy to function like an electrical socket. The units also contain a 1,000mAh battery, which is equivalent to a smartphone’s lithium-ion. The battery takes 5-8 hours to get a fully charged.
“This product is intended to enabled you to use electricity freely and conveniently in a space restricted in the use of electricity, such as in a plane, a car, and outdoors,” the inventors wrote in a design brief.
The Window Socket appears to use the Korean specification for wall outlets, but could become more widely available in the future
An immediately available product is the “OffGrid” solar backpack by New York startup Voltaic Systems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Help us locate and count all the Carbon Dioxide at the world’s power plants!
http://ventus.project.asu.edu/
Power plants burning fossil fuels constitute over 40% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the Earth’s atmosphere every year. Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. Information regarding where the world’s power plants are located and how much each one is emitting is not well-known outside of the US and a handful of industrial countries. In order for basic research on climate change and the global carbon cycle to move forward, we need this information.
Your role can be as simple as providing the exact coordinates of a single power plant near your home or work (or correcting the location of one already identified). Or, you may have information regarding a series of power plants including, not only location, but power generation, fuel type and CO2 emissions..
Our approach is simple: we ask you to contribute information via simple pin placements on Google Maps and some form filling.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Center Operators Double As Energy Brokers
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/05/15/0135240/data-center-operators-double-as-energy-brokers
“When data centers first opened in the 1990s, the tenants paid for space to plug in their servers with a proviso that electricity would be available. As computing power has soared, so has the need for electricity, turning that relationship on its head: electrical capacity is often the central element of lease agreements, and space is secondary. While lease arrangements are often written in the language of real estate, they are essentially power deals.”
‘Since tenants on average tend to contract for around twice the power they need, Mr. Tazbaz said, those data centers can effectively charge double what they are paying for that power. Generally, the sale or resale of power is subject to a welter of regulations and price controls.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Landlords Double as Energy Brokers
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/technology/north-jersey-data-center-industry-blurs-utility-real-estate-boundaries.html?pagewanted=all
Why pay $600 or more a square foot at unglamorous addresses like Weehawken, Secaucus and Mahwah? The answer is still location, location, location — but of a very different sort.
Companies are paying top dollar to lease space there in buildings called data centers
The centers provide huge banks of remote computer storage, and the enormous amounts of electrical power and ultrafast fiber optic links that they demand.
Prices are particularly steep in northern New Jersey because it is also where data centers house the digital guts of the New York Stock Exchange and other markets. Bankers and high-frequency traders are vying to have their computers, or servers, as close as possible to those markets. Shorter distances make for quicker trades, and microseconds can mean millions of dollars made or lost.
A result, an examination shows, is that the industry has evolved from a purveyor of space to an energy broker — making tremendous profits by reselling access to electrical power, and in some cases raising questions of whether the industry has become a kind of wildcat power utility.
While many businesses own their own data centers — from stacks of servers jammed into a back office to major stand-alone facilities — the growing sophistication, cost and power needs of the systems are driving companies into leased spaces at a breakneck pace.
The center steadily burns 25 million to 32 million watts, said Brian Johnston, the chief technology officer for Quality Technology. That is roughly the amount needed to power 15,000 homes, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.
Mr. Dick said that 75 percent of Resurgens’s lease was directly related to power — essentially for access to about 30 power sockets.
While lease arrangements are often written in the language of real estate,“these are power deals, essentially,” said Scott Stein, senior vice president of the data center solutions group at Cassidy Turley, a commercial real estate firm. “These are about getting power for your servers.”
One key to the profit reaped by some data centers is how they sell access to power.
Since tenants on average tend to contract for around twice the power they need, Mr. Tazbaz said, those data centers can effectively charge double what they are paying for that power. Generally, the sale or resale of power is subject to a welter of regulations and price controls. For regulated utilities, the average “return on equity” — a rough parallel to profit margins — was 9.25 percent to 9.7 percent for 2010 through 2012, said Lillian Federico, president of Regulatory Research Associates, a division of SNL Energy.
Interviews with regulators in several states revealed widespread lack of understanding about the amount of electricity used by data centers or how they profit by selling access to power.
Some data center companies, including Digital Realty Trust and DuPont Fabros Technology, charge tenants for the actual amount of electricity consumed and then add a fee calculated on capacity or square footage. Those deals, often for larger tenants, usually wind up with lower effective prices per square foot.
Regardless of the pricing model, Chris Crosby, chief executive of the Dallas-based Compass Datacenters, said that since data centers also provided protection from surges and power failures with backup generators, they could not be viewed as utilities. That backup equipment “is why people pay for our business,” Mr. Crosby said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big numbers, big confusion
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/dave-s-power-trips/4413574/Big-numbers–big-confusion
It seems that big numbers carry with them big confusion.
In April of this year, Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) published a report titled, “The Power of Wireless Cloud.”2 This is an excellent report and quite easy reading. The report makes several interesting points and predictions. For example, the wireless cloud consumes about 9.2 TWh in 2012, and is expected to grow by 460% to 43 TWh by 2015. Another point is that only about 9% of the wireless cloud energy is consumed by data centers. With all the focus on data center energy efficiency, I would have thought that data centers are a far bigger energy hog.
An earlier report by Dr. Jonathan Koomey states that data centers consume between 1.1 to 1.5 percent of global electricity.3 This is a very large number. The World Bank estimates that the global production of electricity is about 21.49e12 kWh or 21,490 TWh.4 Even 1.1 percent is about 236 TWh. This is considerably more than estimated by CEET. So where is the confusion?
Alcatel-Lucent reported on the power and energy of worldwide base stations and their connected systems.5 This analysis shows that the big energy appetite comes from wireless base stations. Figure 1 shows that the estimated energy consumed annually by wireless base stations is about 60 TWh, while the server and related services consumed is about 14 TWh.
he Alcatel-Lucent report also addressed the power amplifier’s (PA) power efficiency, showing a range of efficiencies from 6 to 40%, depending on the output power.
Terawatt hours are certainly large amounts of energy. A Terawatt is roughly equal to a megaton of TNT. In some ways it is hard to imagine that the world produces so much electricity.
So what does it all mean? It may be that the current energy consumption estimates should not be the main focus. It may be that the growth is the issue. There are tremendous expectations for cloud growth and that most connectivity will be wireless. From smart phones to the “Internet of Things,” it seems that wireless will be a big part of the solution. Growth will demand either increasing our energy output or improving our energy efficiency to help hold the demand at today’s level. It may be that we can meet the cloud traffic demand while decreasing the energy demand.
For more information about this and other power topics, visit TI’s Power House blog: http://www.ti.com/powerhouse-ca
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bell Labs group aims at 90% energy-saving in networks
http://www.eetimes.com/design/communications-design/4414238/Bell-Labs-group-aims-at-energy-saving-in-networks?Ecosystem=communications-design
GreenTouch, a global industry consortium formed by Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, has said its research shows the net energy consumption in the world’s information and communication technology (ICT) networks could be reduced up to 90 percent by 2020, if a number of leading-edge technologies are adopted.
GreenTouch was formed in 2010 with the backing of service providers AT&T, China Mobile, Portugal Telecom, Swisscom, Telefonica and many universities and research institutes. Other companies that have joined the consortium subsequently include Chunghwa Telecom, Fujitsu, Huawei, NTT, Vodafone and ZTE.
“Networks used to be dimensioned and scaled for capacity, performance and cost, never for energy consumption. There is going to be an exponential increase in traffic over the next 10 years so the consortium was formed to look out how to handle data in a sustainable way,” Thierry Klein, chairman of the GreenTouch technical committee told EE Times.
The 90 percent energy-saving claim comes from a theoretical exercise although one that is based on a detailed evaluation of what was possible in 2010 and what will be possible in 2020, Klein said.
Klein stressed that the 90 percent energy saving in networks over 2010 is possible even while coping with the deluge of data that is expected and takes into account the Internet of Things. “The traffic numbers are based on extrapolations from Cisco and others. It may be a lot of devices but the internet of things is not expected to create a lot of data necessarily. Data volume will still be dominated by video for humans,” said Klein.
Mobile networks stand to benefit the most from energy efficiency efforts, as they are the most inefficient and yet the fastest growing networks in terms of data volumes. Mobile networks could realize potential energy efficiency improvements of up to 1043 times.
Energy efficiencies in fixed-line and core networks are also expected, but will be less dramatic.
Among the technologies that should be brought in to achieve improved energy efficiency are small-cell basestations for dense urban environments, shared infrastructure across operators, use of sleep-modes in the network for periods without traffic, dynamic allocation of resources, beam-forming of signal propagation in cells using antenna technology.
“We want to create a road-map for equipment makers and let people know this is achievable. There are more technologies and more projects to come that have not been taken into account,” said Klein.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The data center will save seawater million per year
Dutch data center maintenance services provider INTERXION indicates it is saving one million U.S. dollars per year, or about 777 000 euros by using sea water cooling. The company has a Stockholm data center, which is to take cooling water from the Baltic Sea.
Cooling is one of the most expensive data center business areas. Sea and lake water is used for a purpose elsewhere: among other things, Google’s Summa machine room do so as well, as well as Academica Katajanokka district in the hall.
Interxionin chief engineer of the Lex Coors is interested in expanding its cooling technology to other data centers in Europe.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/konesali+saastaa+merivedella+miljoonan+vuodessa/a902113?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-17052013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Seawater Cooling Saves Data Center Big Bucks, Energy, Despite to Jellyfish Issues
http://www.dailytech.com/Seawater+Cooling+Saves+Data+Center+Big+Bucks+Energy+Despite+to+Jellyfish+Issues/article31575.htm
Company saves about $1M USD a year via, multi-site useage approach, system recouped cost in a single year
European data center firm Interexion decided to try its hand at a unique cooling scheme for its data center in Stockholm, Sweden — seawater cooling. The idea has been a resounding success; except for the occasional jellyfish induced difficulty.
The government occasionally orders Interexion to shut down its seawater pumping for environmental reasons, forcing the company to fall back on traditional chillers. Asked why, the company’s chief engineering officer Lex Coors remarks, “I think it’s to protect the jellyfish.”
The system cost was reduced somewhat by the fact that Stockholm already pumps water from the bay for cooling other locations; thus the system cost “only” $1M USD (appr.) to deploy.
In electric cooling terms, the seawater cost a measly $0.03 USD/kWh, far less than the cost of buying more expensive electric power to cool.
When the project began, Interexion paid $1M USD annually to cool a 1-megawatt (MW) load. Since it’s used the project to expand, while keeping costs down. Today it pays $5.4M USD to cool 5.5 MW of load, approximately a $1M USD annual savings. The system took its Power Usage Effectiveness Ratio — a measure of energy efficiency — from 1.95 down to an impressive 1.09.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Utah Springs Surprise Tax on Massive NSA Data Center
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/05/nsa-tax/
The National Security Agency should complete construction of its 1 million square foot data center near Bluffdale, Utah, this year. As Wired first reported last year, its purpose is to intercept, analyze and store data passing through both domestic and foreign communications networks — including the e-mails, phone calls and Google search history of U.S. citizens.
The NSA will spend around $40 million per year on energy bills for the data center, according to one estimate. But those energy costs may be a bit higher than expected, thanks to a new state law that could levy a 6% energy tax on the facility, the Salt Lake City Tribune reports.
“Data center site selection is very competitive — particularly for the larger projects, as states often end up in bidding/benefits war to secure advantage,” says Greenpeace IT analyst Gary Cook. He says any increase in power costs will cast a long shadow on future operational costs of the facility. It’s a reminder that changes in the local tax or regulatory environment can blow the financial models for big data centers, by adding millions in unexpected costs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infographic: 5 vital signs of healthy data center infrastructure
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/05/data-center-infographic.html
Emerson Network Power (NYSE: EMR) has released a list of five vital signs to help critical facilities managers assess the health of their data center infrastructure. The list, and accompanying infographic, details five vital signs of a healthy 5,000 square-foot data center.
According to Emerson Network Power, data center managers can begin assessing the state of their own data center by examining the current performance of the following vital signs.
1. Effective Cooling: Cooling accounts for approximately 40 percent of total energy used within the average data center.
2. Flexibility and Scalability: Healthy data center designs should incorporate well thought out floor layouts, systems and equipment to meet current data center requirements, while ensuring the ability to adapt to future growth and demands.
3. Reliable and Cost-Saving Power and Energy: Emerson’s Energy Logic industry intelligence has shown that 1 W of savings at the server component level can create 2.84 W of savings at the facility level.
4. Routine Service and Maintenance: For established facilities, preventive maintenance has proven to increase system reliability.
5. Proper Planning and Assessment: Preventive maintenance should be supplemented by periodic data center assessments, which can help identify vulnerabilities and inefficiencies resulting from constant change.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Traditional technologies that have gone solar
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Power_Products/Power_Management/5_Traditional_technologies_that_have_gone_solar.aspx
We hear a lot about why it’s beneficial to “go green” these days. For starters, using the sun to power our stuff is said to be cheaper, cleaner, and safer than electric.
Engineers have discovered new ways to implement solar energy in to our everyday lives.