The ‘Green Fad’ really bothers me, especially in the IT biz. CIO Insight had a big article in eWeek on ‘How to estimate energy efficiency.” The upshot was that a single Intel server consumes 29 KWhs (that’s 29 kilowatt hours of electricity) per week. Yikes! 29,000 watts! That’s a lot, right!!! That’s what the article wants you to believe. Until you think about it…
One kilowatt of electricity costs about 7 cents. 29 x .07 = $2.03 per week. Huh? Two dollars a week? That’s all? So what’s all the fuss about?
Check this out: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080624182135AAmXpHF
The article left out this little bit of information. But it did say that all the data centers in the world consume $2.5 billion per year. That big number is supposed to scare you. As if you had to pay the full bill yourself. You can handle $105 per year, but not $2.5 billion. What are we going to do???
I say, focus on things that matter. $2 per week doesn’t matter compared with the thousands of dollars per week we pay for salaries, advertising, operations, shrinkage, etc. But we like to talk about the ‘cool’ things like ‘Green Initiatives.” Bunk.
–ray