Eye Opener: Cloud Computing Power Requirements

[ahhaa]

Greenpeace estimates that data centres will use 1,963 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020. That is more than the power currently consumed by France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined... more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8594431.stm

[filmboss80]

Cool! Fire up those nuke reactors!

[jmohn]

Consider the source.

Huge numbers with no methodology given for how they were derived are meaningless. It's a shame such drivel even gets noticed.

JerryM

[rallynavvie]

Keep in mind that servers today are a LOT more energy efficient than servers of even a few years ago. Also many more companies are looking at datacenter improvements to cut down on power consumption. It's more than just the electricity the servers are using: more power consumption means more heat to dissipate which means more HVAC energy/infrastructure cost.

While that number might be going up I would wager it's not going up as fast as it was in the past 10 years.