[For an excellent detailed technical analysis of this problem please see Rod Tucker’s presentation – BSA]
http://uninews.unimelb.edu.au/news/5599/
The symposium that it refers to can be found online at:
http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/green_internet/program.html
Dr Rod Tucker’s presentation
http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/people/rst/talks/files/Tucker_Green_Plenary.pdf
High speed broadband will create energy bottleneck and slow Internet, new University of Melbourne study
Media Release, Tuesday 25 November 2008
A surge in energy consumption resulting from increased uptake of broadband will further slow Australia’s Internet, according to University of Melbourne research to be presented this week at the Symposium on Sustainability of the Internet and ICT.
“Increased services like Video on Demand will put pressure on the system and create an energy bottleneck,” said Dr Kerry Hinton of the University’s Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the ARC Special Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN).
In a world-first model of internet power consumption, University of Melbourne researchers have been able to identify the major contributors to Internet power consumption as the take-up of broadband services grows in the coming years.
"It has now become clear that the exponential growth of the Internet is not sustainable, “said Dr Hinton.
The result indicates that, even with the improvements in energy efficiency of electronics, the power consumption of the Internet will increase from 0.5% of today’s national electricity consumption to 1% by around 2020.
Dr Hinton says the growth of the Internet, IT broadband telecommunications will provide a wide range of new products and services.
New home services include Video on Demand, web based real-time gaming, social networking, peer-to-peer networking and more. For the business community, new services may include video conferencing, outsourcing and tele-working.
“To support these new high-bandwidth services, the capacity of the Internet will need to be significantly increased. If Internet capacity is increased, the energy consumption, and consequently the carbon footprint of the Internet will also increase.”
“This will place a major burden on the nation’s power infrastructure as well as significantly contribute to green house gas production.”
Hinton says major ICT and Internet based companies are already experiencing difficulties due to the size and power requirements of servers, routers and data centres.
The model includes the entire network infrastructure required to provide the increasing traffic volumes arising from proposed new high-bandwidth services.
“Increasing amounts of energy will be needed to power and cool Internet equipment that provides high speed broadband.”
“If service providers don’t update their equipment, energy consumption will soar, but then cost of updating may also be prohibitive.”
“This model is important because it shows us where we must focus our efforts to ensure the Internet is energy efficient. If we don’t do this, the Internet will not fulfil the social and economic promise many of us are expecting of it,” Dr Hinton said
The research will be presented at “Symposium on Sustainability of the Internet and ICT” hosted by The ARC Special Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN) 25 – 26 November at the University of Melbourne.
“The Symposium on Sustainability of the Internet and ICT is the first technology symposium in Australia to bring together researchers and practitioners involved with the design and deployment of the Internet, today and into the future,” he said.
Highlights of the program include
• Carbon Rewards Instead of Carbon Taxes - Bill St. Arnaud (Canarie, Canada)
• Green @ Google: A Commitment to Sustainability - ‘Kevin Chen (Google)
• Sources of Energy Drain on Internet Datacenters - Dr. Eng-Lim Goh (Silicon Graphics Inc)
• Smart 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age
Jodi Newcombe (The Climate Group)
For more information visit www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/green_internet/
This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles
Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview
Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.
Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37
Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG
High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP
Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g
How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd