Meanwhile, a Startling Surge in Demand for Electricity

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Grassroots Information Coordination Center (GICC) : One Thread

Meanwhile, a Startling Surge in Demand for Electricity

Roger Anderson The New York Times Thursday, June 7, 2001

DEMAND for electricity jumped after each of three technological breakthroughs: lights and motors in the early 1900s, air conditioning in the 1950s, and personal computers and the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s. More than $50 billion in new transmission lines alone will be required to connect America's regional transmission lines into an integrated whole, and computerized controls will have to be very sophisticated.

There are nine separate and unconnected power grids in the United States today. A national grid is a necessity if we are to solve the problem of local shortages. California's difficulties could spread. New York's electricity industry, for example, has striking similarities to California's.

Both states have been slow to build new power plants and were caught off guard in the last year as demand jumped. The energy problem has sneaked up on us because the personal computer that is attached to the Internet uses most of its power in ways not seen by the consumer - through servers, routers and other trafficking infrastructure located many miles away from the consumer in gigantic, air-conditioned warehouses called server farms.

The facts about some of this little noticed energy use are startling. In 1995 there were 20,000 servers in the world. Today there are 6 million. These servers are connected to about 200 million personal computers around the world.

Wireless technology, too, is contributing to the electricity demand. According to one study, a Web-enabled Palm Pilot uses as much electricity as a heavy-duty refrigerator.

Roger Anderson, in The New York Times.

http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=22111

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), June 06, 2001

Answers

Wireless technology, too, is contributing to the electricity demand. According to one study, a Web-enabled Palm Pilot uses as much electricity as a heavy-duty refrigerator.

Can someone explain to me how that is possible?

-- Guy Daley (guydaley1@netzero.net), June 07, 2001.


That boggles me, too. Sure would like an explanation. That seems like a tremendoous amount of waste.

-- R2D2 (r2d2@earthend.com), June 07, 2001.

Wireless technology, too, is contributing to the electricity demand. According to one study, a Web-enabled Palm Pilot uses as much electricity as a heavy-duty refrigerator.

I remember encountering this claim before. As I recall, it was accompanied by an explanation that the total energy used in the production of a Palm Pilot and all attendant bits plus actual use and of course the power demands of the server [whew! pause for breath] equals the production-AND-use energy demands of a fridge. I have no idea if this is in fact the case, or if it is "the" explanation; maybe it will jog someone else's recollection?

-- L. Hunter Cassells (mellyrn@castlemark-honey.com), June 07, 2001.


The claim that 1 Palm = 1 Fridge is occurs in this article. I wrote the author the following:
> ``Do you know how much energy it takes to run a Palm Pilot?''
> asks John Ellis, the former boss of Puget Sound Energy.
>
> The astounding answer:  One Palm equals one refrigerator,
> in terms of total energy used.
This should be astounding, because it's thoroughly bogus. This "fact" compares the total running + lifecycle + infrastructure energy costs of a Palm with just the running costs of a refrigerator. A fair comparison would be to add in the lifecycle + infrastructure energy costs of the fridge -- smelting the steel and copper, manufacturing, warehousing, transporting, disposal, etc. etc. But that wouldn't produce the desired dramatic headline, eh?


-- Barb Knox (barbara-knox@iname.com), June 09, 2001.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ