Energy Management and Information Technology Companies: The Industrial Circuit Breaker
“Google It” has become the modern answer to almost any question, with the general public accustomed to having specialized knowledge on a magnitude of topics directly at their fingertips. A story printed by the Sunday Times in 2009 however, caused laypeople to begin questioning their computing habits, as it blatantly discussed the potential environmental impact associated with contemporary computing practices and the Industrial circuit breaker.
The Sunday Times IT Industrial Circuit Breaker
The newspaper, in the course of the publication, vehemently declared that two ‘Google searches’ require the same energy as, and therefore emit the same amount of greenhouse gas as, boiling water for a cup of tea. The Sunday Times was then abruptly entangled in a battle with Google, and Alex Wissner-Gross the author of the study, who they had apparently quoted, and ended up having to retract their statement.
The article did however force goliath companies including Google to do further research into their energy management practices, if only to defend themselves from such incidents in the future. Google consequently found that two ‘Google searches’ result in the emission of approximately 0.2g of CO2 not 7.0g as reported by The Times. The fact remains however, that IT companies utilize a multitude of energy hungry data centers, which consume over 4.5 billion dollars worth of electricity every year in the US alone. This consequently makes them responsible for a large portion of the 2 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions stemming from the IT sector.
Many large businesses such as Google have realized however, that this is not a financially viable or environmentally sustainable way of operating, and have consequently set about redesigning their data centers from their industrial circuit breaker to their panelboards. Companies have consequently undertaken measures such as: monitoring their energy utilization; and researching and developing specialized technologies in a bid to cut their energy consumption.
Monitoring energy utilization may not sound like a move toward energy efficiency however; it is actually an extremely important step in conserving power. The fact is that if companies don’t know where they are consuming the majority of their electrical energy, they can’t make any sensible moves toward changing their operations. For this reason, most data centers now have both software and hardware methods for monitoring the energy utilization of various components such as an industrial circuit breaker and electrical power systems within the center, allowing companies to eliminate or alter energy inefficient equipment.
Technology developments such as: energy efficient power supplies; Central Processing Units and servers; and customized cooling systems also have the potential to save large amounts of energy within a data center. Large conglomerates such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon are currently some of the leaders regarding such developments, with each of these companies boasting specialized custom energy efficient data center designs. Google in particular brags that its data centers now account for a mere 1 percent of global data center energy utilization.
Reducing Electrical Consumption in the IT Industry
It is therefore concluded, that data centers utilized by IT companies are responsible for the consumption of a large amount of electrical energy, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. It can however, be noted that many large IT businesses are working feverishly to reduce their energy consumption, and hence, their environmental impact. It is predicted that further advances in energy efficient technology will greatly aid this movement.
