Business

So, Just How Much Energy Does Google Need to Power its Massive Empire?

Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:09pm by Liz Klimas
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Google Releases Its Energy Data for First Time

It’s easy to use Google and not think about what it takes to power such a massive empire. Have you ever thought about how much electricity Google uses? For the first time, Google release information about its electricity use stating that data centers used 260 million megawatts of power in 2010.

The New York Times likens this to enough energy to power nearly 200,000 homes or a quarter of the output of power from a nuclear power plant. Gizmodo takes it one step further writing that it’s more than enough to power the whole of Salt Lake City and then some — Salt Lake City only has 186,440 people.

But Google, the Times reports, says it’s still making the planet greener. The Times has more:

Up to now, the company has kept statistics about its energy use secret. Industry analysts speculate it was because the information was embarrassing and would also give competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations.

While the electricity figures may seem large, the company asserts that the world is a greener place because people use less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, drives to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said in an interview. [...]

Google also estimated that its total carbon emissions for 2010 were just under 1.5 million metric tons, with most of that attributable to carbon fuels that provide electricity for the data centers. In part because of special arrangements the company has made to buy electricity from wind farms, Google says that 25 percent of its energy was supplied by renewable fuels in 2010, and estimates that figure will reach 30 percent in 2011.

According to Data Center Knowledge (via Gizmodo), of the energy use of data centers worldwide, Google uses less than 1 percent of the 198.8 billion kilowatt hours of total electricity that is estimated for data centers in 2010. Google says it achieved this with some of the most efficient data centers in the world — up to 50 percent more efficient than other data centers.

Dennis Symanski, a senior data center project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, told the Times that he believes Google releasing this information will give other companies incentive to publicly appear greener and drive competition for top spot as the greenest data center.

This electricity figure, the Times reports, includes all of Google’s campuses worldwide, but does not include the electricity used by personal computers, tablets, iPhones, etc., that are using the search engine.

[H/T Gizmodo]

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Comments (37)

Kevin
Posted on September 13, 2011 at 12:58pm
They want to make the world “greener”, yet leave their homepage with a white background. It takes less energy for your monitor to display black, than it does white.
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Uriel
Posted on September 11, 2011 at 10:53pm
Well, it’s a BILLION times LESS electricity than the Marijuana growers use.
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- Salamander
  Posted on September 12, 2011 at 8:12pm
  If it weren’t for the California marijuana farmers (largest cash crop in the state), there wouldn’t be any solar industry!
  Report Post »
pyeatte
Posted on September 11, 2011 at 10:45pm
The admission that they use “wind power” for 25% of their electricity indicates they are wasting a lot of money for political reasons. Add this to their privacy violations and you have good reason to cease using them.
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track
Posted on September 11, 2011 at 2:04pm
Sometimes the comments are more interesting than the articles
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track
Posted on September 11, 2011 at 2:03pm
Damn,you people are entertaining
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Beerbear
Posted on September 10, 2011 at 11:14pm
This will be fun when a vast majority of the energy production is based on a non-linear, chaotic system. Oh wait… did I say that? I meant of course “renewable” energy from solar and wind.

Still wondering what this “renewable” energy is supposed to be, cause, I remember from physics in high school, that energy can’t be renewed. That would be a perpetuum mobile, and that is not possible.
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- Ruler4You
  Posted on September 11, 2011 at 12:12pm
  Spot on, BEER.
  Report Post »
- Ruler4You
  Posted on September 11, 2011 at 12:25pm
  Energy can only be converted from one form to another. And most times that ‘diffuses’ the source into more than one other form.. heat, motion, light
  
  The first law of thermodynamics observes the principle of conservation of energy. Energy can be transformed, i.e. changed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.
  Report Post »
dbg1262
Posted on September 10, 2011 at 8:16pm
where’s Al “ I know everything about everything” Gore? Hmmm … Oh yeah probly in his ‘green’, not really, house, in the situation room.
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- cyclops
  Posted on September 11, 2011 at 3:49pm
  Now, now…..be nice, remember that he invented the Internet…………..LOL!!!
  Report Post »
Lowgo1981
Posted on September 10, 2011 at 10:18am
I love the argument that eventhough they are using a ton of power, they are helping to save power through their applications. Brilliant…And eventhough the police speed, run red lights, and talk on their cell phones, they are helping to protect our safety through their service. Makes perfect sense!
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Califmoma5
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 7:29pm
And we wonder why the Post Office is going out of business. Going Green is also about reducing paper! Gee Du! But I like a paper trail, that is what can catch the bad guys! Oh, darn the roles are reversed again!
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CW3147
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 6:49pm
Saying Salt Lake City could be deceiving because the whole Salt Lake Valley has around a million people. Its like saying Manhattan and not the rest of the New York City area.
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powhatan
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 4:02pm
I normally would not care, but when they profess the liberal crap. then don’t live it…well, elitists anyone?
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cowsell
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:20pm
Wonder how many windmills and solar panels it would take to power these guys. So we should go green and shut down Google?? Maybe we should ask Al Gore what to do.
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- Servant Of YHVH
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:59pm
  Maybe we could get obama, gore, pelosi, reid, boehner, and all the other liberal wackos in Congress and the White House to stand next to Google facing some wind turbines hooked up to Google. That way they could increase their wind turbine usage to 100% and also have lots left over to sell back to the electric companies. They could probably sell enough electricity back to power Washing DC plus a few other cities around there.
  Report Post »
Flyingfish
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:55pm
Fall specifically under the catagory “Who Cares”.

They bought and paid for their electricity with money earned from a service provided to myself and just about everyone else. Their service will use X amount of resources to provide Y service which will result in a demand for better techknowledgy which will in turn will use X-n amount of resources and in turn provide Y+n amount of service which will……

Sounds like a pretty normal business model if you ask me. Nothing to get excited about.
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- LinkedIn G
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:05pm
  It’s the do as I say … not as I do mentality that is hypochritical.
  Report Post »
- Anonymous T. Irrelevant
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:10pm
  I don’t really care, but they don’t need to be lecturing me, or anyone else, about saving energy. I pay for whatever energy I use, but I don’t tell anyone else to save their energy.
  Report Post »
- Baberaham Lincoln
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 6:25pm
  For what it’s worth, Google has literally invested hundreds of millions of dollars in clean energy — from solar, to wind, to geothermal. The “do as I say, not as I do” criticism holds very little weight in this case.
  Report Post »
- 1TrueOne55
  Posted on September 11, 2011 at 10:39pm
  And here is a link to an article that shows the other “Green Energy” source they use…
  
  http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/bloom-energy-boxes/
  Report Post »
NuffSaid
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:41pm
If Google pollutes, it’s okay. If Northern Virginia Power and Light does it, it’s immoral.

Why does this liberal philosophy sound more and more like rap music? Is it because rap music is about me and how important I am and how insignificant others are?.

It’s called “justification.“ I think maybe a liberal psychologist blundered onto ”justification” in the early 60‘s so it’s been around for a while.

Justification is when you do something and then, when criticized in even the smallest way, you discover and propound reasons for the act which make you look just and rational.

“Why‘d you set fire to the dog’s tail, little Johnny? Why’d you buy a new car without discussing it with me first, honey? Why did you allow weapons to be sold to known Mexican drug cartel suppliers, Eric?

These are the kind of questions that cause the weak minded or liberal to “justify” what they did:

Johnny– “The matches were on the table and I wanted to find out if they were dangerous around dogs, daddy.”

Honey– “We need a four wheeler. What if there’s a flood, honey?”

Eric Holder_ “We needed to discover where the guns were going and who was using them and how they were being used. Nobody in the Obama administration or any of the 49 states benefited financially from the sales and absolutely no one on my immediate staff.”
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- Anonymous T. Irrelevant
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:54pm
  “Why does this liberal philosophy sound more and more like rap music? Is it because rap music is about me and how important I am and how insignificant others are?”
  ———————————————————–
  Sounds a lot like what I have been observing with this younger generation. Generation “rap.”
  Report Post »
thinkinghuman
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:40pm
PROBLEM with Googles analogy to gas savings by not driving to a library. I never WENT to a library much. But I have surfed the net a TON and so I use the whole internet thing a lot, it is a major part of my life, and its just a major shift for people. It is a NEW area of impact, and now multiply Googles usages by our OWN usage, and other companies usage, etc. etc. schools too, and this internet and electricity all of a sudden becomes VERY SIGNIFICANT.
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texasfarmer
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:32pm
How many solar panels would it take from Solyndra?
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Smokey_Bojangles
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:29pm
All most as much megawatts of power that Al Gore uses a week.
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- conservative_teacher
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:36pm
  “All Most”? Hooked On Phonics–a real American tragedy. But, you still got “jesus”, so there’s that I guess. LOL!
  Report Post »
- ashestoashes
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:43pm
  Just for the record..guess how much us US tax payers spend in welfare, just primary and secondary education, welfare, medicade ,imprisoning and money sent back to their own countries each year? It is $338.3 billion. Now…I wonder how much energy those illegals use?
  Report Post »
- let us prey
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:38pm
  con of a teacher
  Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach
  Seriously, you pick on grammar? Get over yourself.
  Report Post »
Make the Stupid People Shut Up
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:28pm
How much power do the useless beauracrats in DC use? Roll Back Government.
Thank you Google for being the ultimate Capitalist.
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Birgitte
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:23pm
And they are in bed with the Federal Government. Think about the resources available for use against us.
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Locked
Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:17pm
“Gizmodo takes it one step further writing that it’s more than enough to power the whole of Salt Lake City and then some — Salt Lake City only has 186,440 people.”

Huh. Google uses as much energy as – and is infinitely more useful than – the Mormon cult’s HQ.

(I keeeed, I keeeed)
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- LinkedIn G
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:35pm
  Is the Mormon church preaching green energy ? Google is. That’s the point.
  Report Post »
- J_Dub
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 2:43pm
  Ooops… your religious bigotry is showing. But hey… you’re obviously quite the comedian. You should work in entertainment… :/
  Report Post »
- Locked
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:03pm
  No bigotry, J_Dub, simple facts. I don’t find Mormonism useful; I also don‘t think it’s a “Christian” religion.
  
  On the other (secular) hand, Google is the most successful example of capitalism in the world… outside of Wal-Mart, which is ironically mostly filled with goods from Communist countries. As Google isn’t, I find it a better example of western capitalism.
  Report Post »
- GENEPAGLIARI
  Posted on September 9, 2011 at 3:42pm
  u keeed someone’s car, khalid
  Report Post »

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