Technology Companies and the Industrial Circuit Breaker for Energy Consumption
Climate change has become an extremely contentious issue over the last few decades, with scientists, political figures and environmental groups attacking industries that they see as being environmentally unsustainable. One of the sectors which has recently been put under the microscope is Information Technology (IT), which may come as a surprise to many people, considering that the industry doesn’t exactly conjure up images of billowing black smoke and felled trees.
Industrial circuit breaker
A little known fact however, is that IT data centers single-handedly utilize approximately 330 billion kilowatt hours of electrical energy every year, the majority of which is not generated from renewable sources. Environmental groups Greenpeace have consequently shown concern regarding the greenhouse gas emissions that such high energy utilization produces. Greenpeace has also expressed alarm regarding the overall growth rate of the IT industry and the resulting increase in the number of data centers being built. It is estimated that if data centers don’t cut down on their energy usage, up to 1112 billion kilowatt hours will be consumed annually by the year 2020.
The IT industry is however; fully aware of the negative impact that such extensive energy consumption would have on both the environment and their company’s profit margins, and as such, most installations have begun to improve the energy efficiency of their data facilities which even include a new and more efficient industrial circuit breaker. The steps taken however differ greatly amongst companies, generally depending upon the size of the business, with larger companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo and Facebook tending to have better financial and research and development resources than smaller businesses.
Many of these larger companies are consequently leading the energy management movement, having already made simple changes within their facilities which have been mimicked by smaller companies such as: installing smart energy efficient lighting systems; eliminating unutilized electrical equipment; right-sizing their centers; tightly monitoring their energy utilization; and consolidating their servers.
The advanced technology and larger budgets available to many larger conglomerates, has also allowed for the implementation of more sophisticated changes to their data center operations. Yahoo for example, has tackled the issue of data center cooling, by constructing numerous data centers in temperate areas, which allow for the exploitation of ‘free air cooling’. This is said to have the potential to cut data center energy consumption by up to 70 percent.
Most large companies are also developing, designing and employing their own IT equipment within their data centers, in a bid to cut energy costs. Google for example, prides itself on its servers, which are rumored to be an adaptation of standard available models however; a statement on their website reveals that ‘unnecessary components’ such as peripheral connectors and video cards are removed from their servers, which conserves power.
These kinds of energy conservation solutions are generally not available to smaller companies generally owing to the cost of developing such measures. Smaller businesses are however benefiting from technological breakthroughs made by larger more advanced corporations such as ‘green servers’, the improved industrial circuit breaker and more energy efficient power supplies.
It is consequently believed that if large businesses such as those previously discussed continue to strive toward becoming more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable, they will develop new methods and technology, which will benefit the IT industry as a whole.
