Data centers rack up $7b annual power bill

by Adam Turner

Friday, 16 February 2007

Data center energy consumption has doubled since 2000 and could increase another 75 per cent by 2010, according to a new study.

The world's data centers are racking up $US7.2 billion in power bills every year, $US2.7 billion of which comes from the US, according to a study commissioned by AMD. Released at the LinuxWorld OpenSolutions Summit in New York, the survey is based on IDC server installation figures.

US data centers annually consume the output of five 1000 megawatt power plants, says report author Jonathan Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University and scientist at America's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Total data center electricity consumption in 2005, in the US alone, was approximately 45 billion kWh once you allow for cooling and auxiliary equipment. This represented 1.2 per cent of US electricity consumption, comparable to the amount of power consumed by all of the country's color televisions.{moscomment}

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