11 ms·

"a ratio of 1.8 kWh per GB of data transferred" This seems wildly high, even counting all the hops. For reference, 1.8 kWh is enough to move my car 7 miles and

"a ratio of 1.8 kWh per GB of data transferred" This seems wildly high, even counting all the hops. For reference, 1.8 kWh is enough to move my car 7 miles and my e-bike over 100 miles.

aimor 6y ago
It's difficult to estimate accurately, but their methods are spelled out on the website. https://www.websitecarbon.com/how-does-it-work/ https://www.websitecarbon.com/how-does-it-work/ "Energy intensity of web data Energy is used at the data centre, telecoms networks and by the end user’s computer or mobile device. Of course, this varies for every website and every visitor and so we use an average figure. The figures used are for 2017 from the report On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030 by Anders Andrae and Tomas Edler, adjusted to remove manufacturing energy as this is not relevant to this calculator. We then divide the total amount of energy used by the total annual data transfer over the web as reported in the Nature article, How to stop data centres gobbling up the world’s electricity. This gives us a figure of 1.8kWh/GB."
- crazygringo 6y ago
  If you view the paper [1], I gave it a quick scan and it seems to be counting the electricity usage of all communications devices on top of data centers. So in power per GB transferred, it's counting all the power used by people's 60" internet-connected TV displays. Which is, obviously, absurd to include if you're trying to measure the marginal effect of additional data. More data doesn't increase your screen's power consumption, obviously. An accurate claim for Plausible would have to be based mainly on marginal increases of power by datacenter and communications networks. [1] https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/6/1/117/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/6/1/117/htm
  - SamBam 6y ago
    It's hard to say. Obviously without any data at all none of those screens would be on. I always find the discussion of marginal increases of energy tricky. If I buy a plane ticket on a half-empty flight, obviously that flight was going to take off anyway, so the marginal increase of my weight plus my luggage is fairly negligible in comparison, so I'm only to "blame" for a fraction of the fuel spent, right? But who else is there to blame except the passengers, without whom there would be (eventually) no flights? So shouldn't we all divide the blame evenly?
    - crazygringo 6y ago
      If we keep it simple, there are two kinds of marginal increases. The first type is when marginal increase can lead to a "new unit", like planes you refer to -- or servers used by data centers. If a plane fits 100 people, then (simplifying) 1/100 of the time you'll result in a new plane being used, so it makes sense to divide the plane's total resources by passengers -- not just the fuel you used. But the second type never results in a "new unit". In this scenario, using more resource-hungry analytics will never push someone to purchase a second cell phone to spread the load. So counting anything but marginal energy increase usage by the CPU directly is disingenuous. So in the case of analytics software, their data center server/power resources fall into the first type. But the consumer device resources fall into the second type. So in this case I don't think there's anything tricky at all about it.
guenthert 6y ago
Someone wants to be paid for that energy dissipated. I don't see how Netflix could be profitable this way.

"a ratio of 1.8 kWh per GB of data transferred" This seems wildly high, even counting all the hops. For reference, 1.8 kWh is enough to move my car 7 miles and my e-bike over 100 miles.

aimor 6y ago

It's difficult to estimate accurately, but their methods are spelled out on the website. https://www.websitecarbon.com/how-does-it-work/ https://www.websitecarbon.com/how-does-it-work/ "Energy intensity of web data Energy is used at the data centre, telecoms networks and by the end user’s computer or mobile device. Of course, this varies for every website and every visitor and so we use an average figure. The figures used are for 2017 from the report On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030 by Anders Andrae and Tomas Edler, adjusted to remove manufacturing energy as this is not relevant to this calculator. We then divide the total amount of energy used by the total annual data transfer over the web as reported in the Nature article, How to stop data centres gobbling up the world’s electricity. This gives us a figure of 1.8kWh/GB."

crazygringo 6y ago
If you view the paper [1], I gave it a quick scan and it seems to be counting the electricity usage of all communications devices on top of data centers. So in power per GB transferred, it's counting all the power used by people's 60" internet-connected TV displays. Which is, obviously, absurd to include if you're trying to measure the marginal effect of additional data. More data doesn't increase your screen's power consumption, obviously. An accurate claim for Plausible would have to be based mainly on marginal increases of power by datacenter and communications networks. [1] https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/6/1/117/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2078-1547/6/1/117/htm
- SamBam 6y ago
  It's hard to say. Obviously without any data at all none of those screens would be on. I always find the discussion of marginal increases of energy tricky. If I buy a plane ticket on a half-empty flight, obviously that flight was going to take off anyway, so the marginal increase of my weight plus my luggage is fairly negligible in comparison, so I'm only to "blame" for a fraction of the fuel spent, right? But who else is there to blame except the passengers, without whom there would be (eventually) no flights? So shouldn't we all divide the blame evenly?
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    If we keep it simple, there are two kinds of marginal increases. The first type is when marginal increase can lead to a "new unit", like planes you refer to -- or servers used by data centers. If a plane fits 100 people, then (simplifying) 1/100 of the time you'll result in a new plane being used, so it makes sense to divide the plane's total resources by passengers -- not just the fuel you used. But the second type never results in a "new unit". In this scenario, using more resource-hungry analytics will never push someone to purchase a second cell phone to spread the load. So counting anything but marginal energy increase usage by the CPU directly is disingenuous. So in the case of analytics software, their data center server/power resources fall into the first type. But the consumer device resources fall into the second type. So in this case I don't think there's anything tricky at all about it.

guenthert 6y ago

Someone wants to be paid for that energy dissipated. I don't see how Netflix could be profitable this way.