A startling fact about Google searches has been revealed:
"Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle" or about 7g of CO2 per search. We are happy to make clear that this does not refer to a one-hit Google search taking less than a second, which Google says produces about 0.2g of CO2, a figure we accept. In the article, we were referring to a Google search that may involve several attempts to find the object being sought and that may last for several minutes. Various experts put forward carbon emission estimates for such a search of 1g-10g depending on the time involved and the equipment used.
This article also describes that Google is cautious about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to disclose the locations of its data centers.
Gartner Inc. has predicted that the cost of supplying energy to a server over its three-year lifetime will soon exceed the server’s acquisition cost. In the years to come the strategy for the biggies like Microsoft, Google, IBM and Yahoo would differentiate their service offering by providing efficient and greener
Google is taking steps towards reducing its carbon foot print by:
- focus on working towards a goal of making electricity from renewable sources cheaper than from
coal (RE
- Reconsidering business continuity plans
- Improving the power efficiency of their data center operations by
o Raise the temperature and humidity.
o Power reduction in facilities in the data center in cooling(typical chiller systems are only 60% efficient; Google has gotten to 90% by employing evaporative cooling
Source: searchdatacenter.techtarget.com
Typical metric for measuring the power efficiency of a data center is Power Utilization Efficiency (PUE) which measured as follows:
PUE = Total Facility Power/IT Equipement Power
Most contemporary data centers are in the 2.0-2.5 range – for every watt of power that a server uses to compute, they burn more than a watt in transmission loss, battery loss and cooling. Google is at 1.19 and Yahoo is targeting 1.03 in its next-gen data centers.
Water-based
As a step towards furthering its efforts to achieve a goal of making electricity from renewable sources cheaper than from coal, was granted a patent on an innovative method of water-based data center. The original patent filed can be found here.
Here are the details:
Invented by Jimmy Clidaras, David W. Stiver, and William Hamburgen
Assigned to Google
Granted: April 28, 2009
Filed February 26, 2007
Some of the factoids about this patent are:
1) The data center will be mounted on a floating platform in the sea and powered by sea based electrical systems. The electrical systems that may be used would be similar to wave/tide power generators such as Pelamis machines. These generators work on the principal of artificially generated waves/tides in the vicinity of the data center to generate the power.
2) All systems will be contained in standard shipping containers and would be connected to the electrical and cooling systems. This concept has come from Google’s earlier filed patent and granted on modular data centers. The original patent you can find here.
3) Other power sources such as sea-based wind generator farms and power from river currents have also been suggested in the patent.
Given some of the challenges companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo face such as:
- Physical space
- Operating expenses
- Security and reliability
- Thermal/Power management
It has become a matter of paramount important that companies innovate in a manner to differentiate in the market place and reap possible benefits from such approaches in the years to come.
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