away. I've been itching to reply all week, but somehow I've gotten
less good at spending hours of personal time every day on my
computer. :) Maybe this is good, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, I'm pleased as can be that people are responding to my
arguments with more and more statistics!!! this is not my typical
experience. Blug is great. I love nerds. :)
I'm going to incorporate several items that I wanted to respond to in
one email, rather than responding to each of them individually...
On Fri, Oct 12, 2007 at 1:28PM -0400, "Simón A. Ruiz" wrote:
>Wait a minute.
>
>Dig a little deeper and check out:
>http://www.industcards.com/top-100-pt-1.htm
>No 1 - Itaipu 14,750 MW
>and http://www.industcards.com/top-100-pt-4.htm
>No 100 - Cordemais 3,185 MW
>
>We're not looking at 25 more average power plants (thus 1% increase
>in world power consumption), we're looking at 25 more Itaipus, which
>would be roughly 370 MW, roughly a little less than the combined
>output of the rest of the top 100 power plants on the planet.
You make an excellent point, I was naively assuming that power plant
output was roughly equivalent, and that's clearly not the case.
However, you're arguing it too far in the other direction (see
below)...
>And keep in mind that as we bring electricity to the parts of the
>world that still lack it, they're not ONLY going to be using it for
>computing, that figure only reflects the chunk of the new needed
>electricity that computers will be sucking on.
One of my points is that additional power plants, per se, is not
necessarily all that bad. Indiana has at least 15 power plants, and
even if they aren't as high-power as many others, they exist here
without nagatively impacting quality of life all that much (I only
know where a couple of them are) even though they are about mostly
using the dirtiest power generation technology still in operation in
the western world.
Put another way, one of my main points is this: a lot of
environmentalists take an attitude of "every bit of development is
bad", I look at it more as "we want a very good cost/benefit ratio for
any development that we do." Even if my numbers were off, I still
like the cost/benefit of computing.
>Only 17 power plants currently in the world generate more than 5MW.
I'm quite sure you meant to say "5GW" or equivalently "5,000MW" in
that sentence. Simple mistake, but three orders of magnitude really
changes the equations. :)
>Indiana and Ohio together wouldn't make a dent in that figure.
I agree that my gee-whiz claim about Indiana and Ohio was wrong
(although, I'm not even questioning the original assertion (as Mark
has) that 25 Itaipu's would be necessary to double the world's
computers). However, I disagree that it wouldn't make a dent.
I went through these two pages
http://www.industcards.com/st-coal-usa-in.htm
http://www.industcards.com/st-coal-usa-oh.htm
and added up all of the power ratings of all the plants. The total
was 25,885 MW, or about 1.75 Itaipus. Using the "25 Itaipus to double
the world's computers" formula, this means that the COAL FUELED plants
in Indiana and Ohio provide about 7% of energy required to run the
world's computers. So, even knowing that this only includes coal fuel
plants, my previous assertion was about an order of magnitude off. I
stand corrected. But, 7% is definitely a dent in my book.
On Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 12:10:36AM -0400, "Simón A. Ruiz" wrote:
>Unless it turns out that computers are in fact feeding power into the
>electrical grid, there's really no way to argue against coming up with
>strategies to deliver computing with less power.
Here's my basic argument: I think it's fair to assume that cars use at
least 20x as much power in general use than computers do, and
typically generate more pollution per unit energy. So, add up cars
and computers and I'm seeing a pie chart showing that 95%+ of the
environmental impact coming from cars. Then you're saying "let's make
computers more efficient to benefit the earth" and what I'm saying
back is "ok, but if we somehow got computers to run without
electricity, we'd make at best a 5% improvement. I think our energy
is better spent working on a 6% gain in fuel efficiency for
automobiles." And, when something like a 50% gain in fuel efficiency
can be had for simply driving a small car vs. a big one, it's hard for
me to get too excited about computers.
And then, there's refrigerators and air conditioners...
>I started thinking about this stuff as I considered the possibility of
>building a completely power-independent home (and solar power seems the
>way to go). I'm a total computer geek, and with the number of computers
>I have now, they're a major chunk of my energy needs.
Don't forget wind!! :)
>Mark Krenz wrote:
>>David Ernst wrote:
>> Says that a ford escort uses 110 horsepower = 82,026 watts. So,
>> driving a Ford Escort (my old one used to get about 33 mpg (need I
>> point out that the escort is not among the highest performance
>> vehicles ever designed?)) for ONE MINUTE is roughly the same power
>> consumption of leaving a desktop computer idle (at 60 watts) for ONE
>> DAY. The twelve hours of driving I'm planning on this weekend to
>> visit my parents will the amount of energy of two years of leaving
>> my
>> desktop turned on 24/7. And cars are mobile things with difficult
>> emissions control problems. The computers' new power plants could
>> be
>> anything from wind farms to fuel cells.
>
> This is why I responded to your email. I realize that obviously
>the power output of a car that is turned on is not 0 watts when its
>in park or even when you are coasting. Obviously, its consuming
>fuel. But its also obviously not producing 82000 watts all the time
>when its running. However, it wouldn't be a direct relationship
>between the rpms of the engine and the watts it produces. So I'm not
>sure you could say something like when you run the engine at 1/4 of
>full throttle that it would produce only 82000 watts. I agree with
>your comparison though, cars do use a lot more power than computers.
Well, how about we look at it this way: in a year, I typically drive
somewhere around 10,000 miles, and I get about 35 mpg. That's about
286 gal (about 2 fillups a month... sounds about right). I'm seeing
stats for KWh/gal of gasoline (including here)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/science/units.html
at about 36. So I use roughly one KWh per mile when I drive my Saturn
on the highway. That's 10MWh per year.
If we go with the 60W idle computer assumption we've been using, a
year of computer idle is:
60W * 24hours/day * 365days/year =~ 0.53MWh per year. So, again
roughly, I consume about 20 times as much energy driving my Saturn as
I do letting my desktop run 24/7. The easiest way for us all to gain
efficiency in this model would be to be like normal people and run our
computers only 8 hours per day. But, let's not get crazy now. :)
My basic drive, as stated above, is to focus on the best benefits on
conservation. Seeing SUVs all around and air conditioners set to 68F
all summer long makes focusing on computers efficiency seem like
nickel-and-dime stuff compared with the big power-consuming machines
in the world. Obviously, Simon is correct that every bit we save is
another bit saved, but I'd rather focus on the big problems than get
worked up over the thin slices of the pie, especially when the
difference is so stark. And, I doubt that the typical third world
person is going to be more excited about a computer than they would be
about a car or an air conditioner as their quality of life improves.
David
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