Data Storage Costs

[TugboatEng]

I've been curious lately about the CO2 cost of data storage. I tried to Google it and it's people talking about mWEe to send an email so now I know they're BSing. Some try to say that 35% of the electricity is renewable, even. All of the numbers are rates with no time quotient.

My question is: How much energy is required to store a typical email? Power per megabyte per year? Maybe extrapolate that to a social media post? You know, the ones pushing the CO2 agenda?

This may be some fine ammunition in the war against propaganda.

 

[waross]

It depends.
My archives on the thumb drives in my drawer are not a significant consumer of energy.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[Maslov]

I've seen these numbers thrown around, but with no clarity on if this is generated by hitting send or if it incorporates CO2 generated by data storage for some time:

Source:

https://youtu.be/zvnVRg-Bi8A?feature=shared&t=478

 

[Maslov]

I did some digging. These numbers come from "How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything" by Mike Berners-Lee.

I don't have a copy, but looking at articles it seems these numbers include the "embodied carbon of the device it was sent on" which seems silly... Sending emails does not appreciable "wear out" my computer/phone...

Regardless, he claims typing an email up for 10min costs 17g of CO2 versus just 0.3g for sending the email, so it looks like power consumption of the device is the more important culprit. Definitely an argument for getting off social media then.

Servers are going to run anyway, so the cost of storage is moot.

 

[thermionic1]

Data storage, I don't know. AI Data centers....We have one being built in our footprint. Phase I & II are being built to handle 1200MW continuous, with more to come.

 

[PMR06]

1200MW continuous

Is that a typo? 120MW?

 

[GregLocock]

Oracle have just announced a 1 GW nuclear power station, to power something or other

https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/11/oracle_1gw_datacenter_smr_plan/

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[thermionic1]

Is that a typo? 120MW?

Nope. And I heard from the TSO this week that in the final configuration they are planning on 3600MW. Yes, 3.6 Giga Watts! Enough to send 3 DeLorean's back to the future!

My limited understanding is that AI data centers use 3-4 times the electricity that a conventional data center uses.

 

[PMR06]

@thermionic1, thanks for the follow up. That is crazy though! Are we building SkyNet?! I dont know whether to buy nvidia stock, or a doomsday bunker!