1 Google Serach = 1 Hour of Light

This is the claim:

A one time Google Search query equals into the same energy 1 hour usage of a 40 Watt "Energy Saving" Light Bulb.

Can this be true?

Source: Spiegel

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"1 Google Serach = 1 Hour of Light" by was published on July 3rd, 2007 and is listed in Science.

Tristram wrote,

Google recently announced their brand new solar power installation. It has a power of 1.6 MW and they say it provides 30% of the peak demand http://www.google.com/corporate/solarpanels/home

Let’s suppose the googleplex always runs on peak power, this would mean 4MWh energy consumption every hour.

This article says that one search is equivalent to 40Wh.

Therefore the are no more than 100,000 requests every hour. That seems hard to believe.

NB : of course there isn’t only the googleplex, but it neither only hosts the servers
NB2 : we should also take in account the whole chain of pollution (due to the transport of employees, producing the hardware and so on). But this gets to difficult.
NB3 : 40W is a lot for an energy saving bulb! They rarely exceed 20W (supposed to be equivalent to a 100W normal bulb)

Link | July 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
RGS wrote,

Tristam, thank you very much for the comment and for clearing up the statement from Spiegel.

Link | July 3rd, 2007 at 11:44 pm