The expected exponenti lwa le increase of the power consumption by the ever-growing demand for data centers continues to lag behind earlier expectations. This seems to be due to the rise of virtualization, resulting in less physical servers.
Research by Jonathan Koomey of Stanford University shows that the actual number of servers significantly decreased compared to earlier predictions. This would be due to the decreased demand for computing power, the economic crisis and the rise of virtualization and more energy-efficient chips.
According to Koomey, who did research at the request of The New York Times, speaks to his research, a prediction of the Environmental Protection Agency. This organization proposed in 2007 by the explosive growth of the internet, the power consumption by data centers between 2005 and 2010, would double. This doubling would lead to a consumption of roughly 100 billion kilowatt hours. The stroomconsumptie of data centers in the US would, according to this report in that period increase from 7 to 12 gigawatts.
Although there still is a strong growth, it appears that this doubling not to be realized. According to the report from Koomey, “Growth in Data Center Power Use 2005 to 2010′, is the power consumption of data centers worldwide with ‘only’ 56 percent. In the United States, would even 36 percent. “This is especially due to the recession, but also by a number of changes in the way datacenters are designed and used. The power consumption of data centers is clearly much lower than what was expected”, says the researcher in The New York Times.