Server farms could rival smelters in power use

The amount of electricity used by giant server farms in the Pacific Northwest that power the Internet continues to grow and will eventually approach the consumption rate of the region’s aluminum smelters 30 years ago. According to a recent analysis by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, demand from these data centers by 2030 could be about two-thirds of the power consumption of the Pacific Northwest aluminum industry during its heyday in the 1980s. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and other companies have built data centers in the region. Facebook estimates about 526 million people will log in every day this year through a desktop computer or a mobile device — a 41 percent increase over 2011 usage. Facebook users also upload more than 300 million photos a day. While growth in demand by server farms in the region is proceeding as anticipated, the council reported, it should be improved. “The amount of data these centers handle is growing at an explosive rate, making it imperative that data centers continue to improve their energy efficiency to keep power demand from exploding as well,” the council reported. Custom data centers house digital electronic equipment for Internet site hosting, electronic storage and transfer, credit card and financial transaction processing, telecommunications, and other activities that support the growing electronic information-based economy, the council reported...more