Google Says the Internet of Things? Smarts Will Save Energy

by Cade Metz - Wired, Apr. 29, 2015 – 

As the Internet of Things expands, with everything from thermostats to cameras to cars plugging into the net, so does the need for machines that can handle those connections. The data traveling to and from all those thermostats, cameras, and cars, you see, must flow through the massive data centers operated by the likes of Google, Apple, and Facebook.

The worry is that powering all this extra hardware will require exponentially larger amounts of electricity -- not to mention all the money and space spent on the hardware itself. But Urs Hölzle says this won?t be the problem it may seem. Hölzle is the man who oversees Google?s worldwide network of data centers, and he believes that efficiencies brought by devices such as Internet-connected thermostats, lighting systems, and self-driving cars will balance out the extra power needed to drive our computing centers.

"I?m pretty confident that the Internet of Things is going to have net negative power consumption," Hölzle said during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday. "If you control lights, heat, and cooling in a smarter ways, that?s really substantial." Even self-driving cars, he says, will push us towards lower power consumption. "You?ll have fewer cars on the road, fewer parking lots, less congestion, because every car is a potential carpool." In other words, he believes we?ll use self-driving cars in much the same way we use Uber today, calling one whenever we need one.

 Back