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Internet firms get creative when figuring out how to lower their electrical bills.

Do you "drive" the Internet Highway to save gas? And does it really save energy or is the Internet an energy-guzzler and polluter? Let's first look at the power of computing. Early electronic computers were certainly power-hungry. The famous ENIAC had 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. Power load was a staggering 150,000 W.¹ Today, your cellphone can top the ENIAC for computing power using only a battery.

Fortunately, the advent of the solid-state transistor and the IC multiplied computing power by more than a million times while reducing energy consumption by many orders of magnitude. Computational efficiency was boosted by billions. So, did the IC prevent a computer energy crisis? Maybe yes, maybe no, but probably yes and no. Here's the issue. The extraordinary value of solid-state logic has made computers nearly ubiquitous and future programs could put a computer in the hands of almost every person on earth. But computers still use up energy, and they have a long way to go in terms of efficiency. Perhaps nanoelectronics will help them out.

Logic chips, especially those in high-speed computers and powerful servers, use many watts of power. Thermal management remains a challenge, pointing to a much bigger problem - energy waste. Wasted heat means that we're using electrical power to do a little computing and a lot of heating that adds more energy burden for fans, coolers and room air conditioning. But if computers consume energy, are they changing the environment along with lifestyles? Let's trace power from the computer to the plug to the grid.

Much of today's electrical energy is derived from simple chemical oxidation, or combustion. Carbon is our basic fuel, whether it's carbon-only coal, or carbon joined with some hydrogen as petroleum and natural gas. Carbon combines with oxygen to produce CO₂ and energy; most power generation is carbon-based.

The Internet is a vast and complex global network of servers, routers, switches, photonic systems and your own computer (you can apportion a percent use). There are over one billion Internet users and another five billion to go. Even a search system like Google needs a lot of energy to power the computers. Google operates mega computer-clusters, maybe the largest on the planet, and they have centers around the world. Estimates are that Google runs at least 250,000 computers and servers consuming 20 MW and running 24/7.²

According to the Wall Street Journal, computer-centric firms are tracking down cheaper electricity now vital to growth.³ Big Internet firms have been adding thousands of computers to data centers to handle heavy customer use of services, including new online video. A large data center consumes as much power as a city of 30,000 to 40,000 people. The WSJ calls them "power-guzzling centers."

Electricity is now a closely tracked expense and the biggest cost after payroll. Microsoft's data-center power use has doubled over the past four years and will at least triple in the next five. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are looking to save money in Washington state, where electricity is the best bargain in the U.S. because federal dams feed in power. The former two are heading for the farm community of Quincy, WA. These two centers will consume up to 90 million watts of electricity. But the cost per kW-hour is only about one-third the average rate. Google is working on a new data center on a 30-acre tract in Dallas, OR, and will draw electricity from federal hydropower wholesaler Bonneville Power Administration.

Future search centers will locate near power stations. A forward-thinking center may have its own wind or solar farm. Several companies have added their own power-generating capability and this seems to be a trend. Or, a reinvention of an old idea since many factories had their own power plants many decades ago.

Back to Internet power. Mark Mills⁴ caused a stir in 1999 when he estimated that the Internet used 8% of America's electrical power. Things became political when his data were used to argue for more nuclear power plants. Mills may have been on the high side, but he asked the right question: How much energy does the Internet consume?

Modern estimates of Internet energy consumption come in at about 5%, or 70 trillion watts/hrs/year.² Now consider that electricity production is the biggest CO₂ generator and that 1 kW-hour produces about 1.3 lbs. of this greenhouse gas. Coal is the worst since it is pure carbon, producing about 2.1 lbs. of CO₂ per kW-hour. While we may boast that driving the Internet Highway saves gas, there is still a lot of exhaust - about 100 billion lbs. of carbon dioxide per year, just in the U.S.

References

1. ENIAC, http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~museum/ and U.S. Patent 3,120,606, filed on June 1947.

2. Wikipedia.com.

3. K. J. Delaney and R. Smith,"Surge in Internet Use, Energy Costs Has Big Tech Firms Seeking Power," Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2006.

4. Mark Mills, "The Internet Begins with Coal," Environment News, Oct. 1, 1999.

Dr. Ken Gilleo is with ET-Trends LLC; et-trends@cox.net. His column appears four times a year.