DukeEnergyWritesDown

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Monday, 24 September 2012

Internet Energy Use

Posted on 08:50 by Unknown
Servers In Data Centers Use Lots Of Electricity, Produce Heat, Need to Be Cooled

Data Centers Need Redundant Backup Power, Usually Batteries and Diesel Fuel Generators


Data Center
Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid.  Data centers contain hundreds or thousands of servers.  A server is a sort of bulked-up desktop computer, minus a screen and keyboard, that contains chips to process data.

Data storage is measured in bytes. The letter N, for example, takes 1 byte to store. A gigabyte is a billion bytes of information.  Roughly a million gigabytes are processed and stored in a data center during the creation of a single 3-D animated movie.   The New York Stock Exchange produces up to 2,000 gigabytes of data per day that must be stored for years.

To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of the area’s top stationary diesel polluters.

Data Center
Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, according to estimates industry experts. Nationwide, data centers used about 76 billion kilowatt-hours in 2010, or roughly 2 percent of all electricity used in the country that year, based on an analysis by Jonathan G. Koomey, a research fellow at Stanford University who has been studying data center energy use for more than a decade. DatacenterDynamics, a London-based firm, derived similar figures.
 
The inefficient use of power is largely driven by a symbiotic relationship between users who demand an instantaneous response to the click of a mouse and companies that put their business at risk if they fail to meet that expectation. Each year, chips in servers get faster, and storage media get denser and cheaper, but the furious rate of data production goes a notch higher.  With no sense that data is physical or that storing it uses up space and energy, those consumers have developed the habit of sending huge data files back and forth, like videos and mass e-mails with photo attachments.
      
Even running electricity at full throttle has not been enough to satisfy the industry. In addition to generators, most large data centers contain banks of huge, spinning flywheels or thousands of lead-acid batteries — many of them similar to automobile batteries — to power the computers in case of a grid failure as brief as a few hundredths of a second, an interruption that could crash the servers.
 
Google’s data centers consume nearly 300 million watts and Facebook’s about 60 million watts.
 
For security reasons, companies typically do not even reveal the locations of their data centers, which are housed in anonymous buildings and vigilantly protected.
 
EMC and the International Data Corporation are companies focused on the management and storage of data. They estimate that more than 1.8 trillion gigabytes of digital information were created globally last year.
 
State environmental agencies have begun to fine companies for installing and repeatedly running diesel generators without obtaining standard required environmental operating permits. Even if there are no blackouts, backup generators still emit exhaust because they must be regularly tested.
Penalties have been as high as $260,000. No national figures on environmental violations by data centers are available, but a check of several environmental districts suggests that the centers are beginning to catch the attention of regulators across the country.  (NYTimes, 9/22/2012)
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • Radon-222 Content In Natural Gas
    Fracking Opponents and Proponents Weigh In A debate is raging in the fracking area about the content of radioactive radon-222 in Marcellus ...
  • D.C. Water Management
    In 2004 the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority was forced to settle a federal lawsuit that claimed it failed for decades to stop its sewers from...
  • Sodium Sulfur Battery
    Sodium Sulfur (NaS) batteries are high capacity battery systems developed for electric power applications. A NaS battery consists of liquid...
  • White House Meets With Climate/Energy Stakeholders
    The White House with more than a dozen energy experts and industry officials last Thursday.  President Obama has pledged to focus aggressiv...
  • African American & Latino Energy Employment Program (ALEEP)
    The Center, through its outreach arm, the African American Environmentalist Association (AAEA), is implementing an African American & La...
  • How Do Coal Scrubbers Work?
    Coal Pollution Coal is not a clean-burning substance. It produces sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain; nitrogen oxide, which causes smo...
  • EPA & USDA Partner To Reduce Wasted Food
    Today, EPA and USDA announced the launch of a challenge that asks farmers, processors, manufacturers, retailers, communities and government...
  • Carbon Dioxide Emissions Rose 1.4 Percent in 2012
    Global emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use rose 1.4 percent to 31.6 gigatons in 2012, setting a record and putting the planet on cou...
  • (no title)
  • GAO Report on EPA Regulations and Electricity
    The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently completed a report ( summary ) on the effects of Environmental Protection Agency regulations o...

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (245)
    • ►  August (16)
    • ►  July (36)
    • ►  June (34)
    • ►  May (26)
    • ►  April (33)
    • ►  March (31)
    • ►  February (27)
    • ►  January (42)
  • ▼  2012 (255)
    • ►  December (33)
    • ►  November (49)
    • ►  October (11)
    • ▼  September (36)
      • Water Costs Rising Nationwide
      • Obama Revokes Chinese Purchase of 4 Oregon Wind Farms
      • DOE Invests In University-Led Nuclear Energy Innov...
      • China's Using Less Metallurgical Coal Hurting USA ...
      • Acid Rain Program Adjusts To Court Ruling
      • Novel Arguments Used To Fight Hydraulic Fracturing
      • Recycling Aluminum Cans
      • General Electric Significantly Expands Mining, Oil...
      • Liquefied Natural Gas Exports
      • Anti Nuclear Activists Meet With NRC
      • Internet Energy Use
      • Droughts Making It Harder To Produce Electricity
      • Worldwide Fracking Protests Planned
      • Coalition Against Nukes Occupies, Rallies & Briefs
      • Wind Sector Hurting From Cloud Over Tax Credits
      • EPA & Manufacturers Agree On Management of Used El...
      • Hollande Administration Will Not Permit Fracking
      • 2nd EPA Administrator Russell E. Train Dies at 92
      • Charging Rates For Electric Vehicles
      • Gas Tax Not Keeping Up With Highway Construction N...
      • D.C. Housing Authority Energy & Water Improvements
      • EPA Adds 12 Sites To Superfund National Priorities...
      • Anti Nuclear Activists Are On The Move
      • The Fed Buying $40 Billion in Mortgage Backed Secu...
      • Israel and U.S. Sign Environmental Cooperation Pact
      • Chesapeake Energy Sells $7 Billion in Assets To Pa...
      • GM's Chevy Volt Selling Well But Cost Hurts Progress
      • U.S. & Canada Sign Amended Great Lakes Water Agree...
      • RGGI Auction Sells 24.5 Million CO2 Allowances
      • DC Department of the Environment Director Fired
      • Radon-222 Content In Natural Gas
      • EPA Opens Campus RainWorks Competition
      • Japan Turns To Russia For LNG
      • Fracking News: Heckmann Corporation Buys Power Fuels
      • Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Regulations
      • Greasy Sewer Pipes
    • ►  August (31)
    • ►  July (30)
    • ►  June (39)
    • ►  May (26)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile