I had never heard the term "frugal computing" until I encountered it in a blog note recently in RoughType. It makes a number of important points. Here is the link to the note and below is the money quote:
As the economic and political costs of client-server computing grow, the shift to more efficient computing systems will accelerate....There are, for instance, a handful of traditional suppliers - Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and AMD, among them - that have made energy efficiency a priority. That gives them a technical and marketing advantage that they may be able to sustain...And, of course, there's Google, which has been a pioneer in efficient computing at both the component and the systems level....The biggest winners, though, will be the users of IT. Although the transition to the post-client-server world will be difficult, companies will end up with cheaper, more efficient, and more flexible information systems.
Google maintains an estimated 450,000 servers around the world to support its wide range of services. Here are some details about its initiative to use solar power at its headquarters in Mountain View, California (see: Google installs massive solar system to power the Googleplex).
Google is installing solar panels at its corporate head office in Mountain View in an attempt to offset some of the high cost of its electricity consumption. The solar panels will put out 1.6 megawatts of power, and will be the largest solar panel installation on a corporate campus in the US. The roofs of the four main buildings of the “Googleplex” will be covered by solar panels, while some car parks will be shaded by them. Although the amount of energy the panels will produce equals the electricity used to power about 1000 homes in California, it only offsets about a third of Google's peak electricity consumption at its headquarters.
Although the ROI for solar power is improving, the economics of this emerging technology still do not work out for most companies. However, Google, with a market cap of $155B, does not need to follow all of the standard rules. Moreover, such a project makes perfect sense in relation to its corporate culture of doing no harm. Having the largest solar panel installation on a corporate campus in the U.S. is worth millions for the company in terms of public relations and image.
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