Energy use

Something I thought about the other day got me thinking even more. My mind wandered off into many other thoughts. What I thought of was cloud computing.

Many years ago before cloud computing was invented. I thought that there would be a time when peoples computers would eventually become terminals with a screen, mouse and keyboard and that was that.

I thought of it as a brilliant idea to also help keep energy usage low, thus saving the environment and money. A lot of money because upgrades were taken care of at the servers living in the cloud.

If you don't know what the cloud is, it's the new name for the Internet these days.

These days however, I'm thinking I may have it wrong, and I think everyone else does too.

See, everyone is and will continue to buy full blown PC's. These PC's will still use the same amount of power, regardless if your files are stored locally or in the cloud. So, no energy savings there.

Then when you think about it, the cloud idea is growing. As it grows, it'll need more resources to keep it going. I know data centres like the ones Google houses its servers in are getting better at energy conservation, but adding another server is still adding another device and more load on the system to produce more power regardless of how you look at it, energy requirements increase.

I have a similar opinion about electric cars.

Great idea, however, think about the local energy providers and how they're effected by a few hundred thousand environmentally conscious people coming home from work in their efficient electric cars, all plugging into their charging stations in their garage or driveway, all at the same time. I don't know about your area but around here, even in well developed Victoria, there are power outages in summer due to higher than normal energy requirements that come from air conditioning. Imagine that, plus cars plugged in and charging too.

And to top things off, there are many rumours and some factual news that the electricity company is planning on significant increases in rates.

So, in the near future that electric car won't be so cheap to run and it may not be too reliable because it didn't get a full charge last night due to that unusually balmy weather and my air con blowing all night long to keep me cool and comfortable.*

*note, that was sarcasm, but it may well be art depicting future life.

pip