Hello Steemians!!
Long distance communication was not always easy. Sending a message took thousands times longer, a century ago. Using postal services also was time consuming. But now, in this date, tens of billions of messages are sent every single day with more efficiency. We are able to update ourself with just a click. Bored?? we can enjoy some videos, watch some movies online, interact with friends using social media, login to steemit.com if our conscience demands some knowledge.
We want to know something, we can google it; need to transact money, we can online pay it ; business meeting?? bahmm!! we can use skype.. this all was possible only due to one and only INTERNET.
So we can say that we have gained a lot of benefits since the Internet came but Do you know how much is the total electricity consumption of the Internet?
After the arrival of the Internet, the whole world is connected to each other. Who could have imagined earlier that the information related to whatever we type will come in our computer screen in less than a second. Who could have imagined, we could have video chat with people who are far on the other side of globe. I mean, this post which you are viewing is not known from which server it is flying from to you. Or when we check our records or check anything online, where does the information come from? and how it comes??
Nowadays, most of us are storing our data in cloud in some way. All of that data that we send to it are actually sitting on very real, physical hard drives somewhere which are in millions. And managing it requires a lot of energy.
In 1992, the total data transfers worldwide was about 100 GB per day which unbelievably increased up to more than 28000 GB per second and since then its never looking back. The numbers has continued to increase and any time we try to gain access of any data stored in the cloud, we require to it to be pulled out of a server. This uses Energy.
According to one study in 2011, about 2% of world's energy was used by internet and that percentage has definitely risen coming in 2017 as the number of people and devices connecting to internet are increasing day by day.
This is where Data Centres come into play.
What are Data Centres??
Data centres are huge, warehouse-like constructions that are full of servers, computers that are designed to store, manage and disseminate its data so that they can be saved as fast as possible. These servers hold the world’s information, everything from world’s news to our pictures uploaded in different sites.
But it has its own challenges.
The servers in data centers are always running, because even when they aren’t active, they need to be ready to retrieve data at any moment.
Many servers are only running at 10 to 15 percent capacity as for data center up time is a key. Some servers even end up as zombie servers, transferring no data at all, just waiting to be called into action.
But whether they’re actually being used or not, all those servers generate a lot of heat which needs to be cooled down and for keeping things cool, the air conditioning bill is sure to inflate the electric bill.
BUT HOW MUCH IS THE TOTAL ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION OF THE INTERNET? - Our main question.
According to a report, in 2013, data centers in the United States alone used up 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. That would be 34 relatively large coal-fired powered plants to generate that much energy.
As per rough estimation, by 2020, the report predicts that data centers will consume 140 billion kilowatt-hours a year and that would be 51 large coal- fired powered plants to generate that much energy.
As we all can assume, the things are going to grow faster in the future and the main player for increasing the cost is the cooling system required in data centers.
So if we want to make the internet more energy-efficient in future , data centers are a good place to start with and finding new ways to keep servers cool while using less energy can dramatically reduce the overall expenditure of internet consumption.
HOW CAN WE ACHIEVE THAT?
- One way to do that can be by having hot and cold aisles.
- Raising the temperature used by air conditioning slightly- as many data centers are kept at 13 degrees & even colder but practically servers run fine at 18-20 degrees. Every half a degree increase in temperature can decrease the energy costs by five percent.
- Server Virtualization can also save up to 10 - 40 percent of energy costs.
Other Plannings that are going on includes-
- Transferring the data centers to already cold areas like Antarctica Or put them all under the water, so that it remains cool by itself.
So, the internet. It’s a pretty big deal and with this increasing demand of internet, it is obvious that the requirement of energy will be more but maybe it doesn’t have to consume quite so much of our resources. So different measures to decrease the power consumption and adding the renewable source of energy to the grid shall somehow be beneficial in the long run.
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