NBN may reduce need for new power plants

Stan Beer
Monday, 03 October 2011 12:41

IT Industry - Development

With the internet data per user growing at 40% a year, the power needed to support that growth is also growing. So do we need new power stations to support future broadband use? The NBN and Moore's Law may save us, according to the head of an Australian telecoms research program.

 

Today the Internet consumes about 1% of the world's electricity supply, which is equivalent to the total electricity generating capacity in Australia. According to Professor Rod Tucker, Director of the Centre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications (CEET), under a worst case scenario, power consumption would grow in line the 40% PA growth in data usage but that is unlikely to happen.

There are a number of reasons, says Professor Tucker, that growth in power consumption will be limited to between 1% and 10% over the next 20 years.

"Working in our favour is Moore's Law which gives us a performance improvement in efficiency of about 15% (a year), although you can't replace everything each year," says Professor Tucker.

"Also, fibre allows transmission of more data for less power so you can add that to Moore's Law because the move to FttP (NBN) is energy efficient."

While conceding that, even with the NBN and Moore's Law working their energy efficient magic, power consumption will still grow due to increased broadband use and data centre expansion, the NBN may allow this to be offset by reducing consumption in other areas.

"Counteracting (increased power consumption) the internet will reduce power consumption in other areas of the economy using such things as teleworking and teleconferencing which reduce the need for using cars and planes," he says.

"At CEET we have a major program concerning how we can make networks more energy efficient."

The proliferation of wireless, surprisingly, could be the one spanner in the works hampering greater energy efficiency moving forward.

"Unlike fibre, wireless is energy hungry," says Professor Tucker. "However, at the moment 95% of data is being consumed over fixed networks."

This evening, Professor Tucker will be joined by a number of Australian telecoms and energy industry leaders, including Marcus Weldon, Global Chief Technology Officer for Alcatel-Lucent, Mike Sandiford, Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute (MEI), and Sundeep Khisty, Green Practice Leader at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services Asia Pacific Japan, for a free public lecture titled "Towards a Green Internet".

Details of the lecture, including registration, can be found here.