Should we shut off the internet for 5 minutes?

Will shutting off the internet save energy? That is what Adam and our friends at Spreadshirt UK are trying to figure out. Here is a reblog from the Spreadshirt UK blog. What do you think?

(Eiffel tower during shut-down)

When we saw in German Television (on the Tagesschau!) that they switched off the Eiffel Tower in Paris on February 1st for five minutes– after the grassroots chain e-mail regarding the UN climate report — we wondered how much impact we can reach if we made a bigger issue out of this. We also saw the progress shutdownday is making (17,000 yes votes so far), and started thinking about business’ role in all this, and how Spreadshirt could be involved.

On April 22nd it’s Earth Day. What would happen if we “switched off the Internet” - or at least think about the technicalities of doing so and how much energy we could save. 5 minutes is only a small gesture right? How hard could it be to not use any power for 5 minutes? Well lets look at Spreadshirt for example:

Is it worth it?

Please wait while I put on my spectacle’s, lab coat and clever brain (here comes the science).

Our sysadmins have provided the following helpful chart:

So lets say we have 25 medium and 25 big servers
25 x 400 = 10,000w
25 x 800 = 20,000w
Firewall, loadbalancer, managed switches = 300w
Total watts used= 30.3kw (the equivalent of 505 regular 60w lightbulbs) x 5mins = 2.5kwh’s.

The average US household (in 2001) used 10.6kwh in a year. So our five minute shutdown will save approx 25% of one average US households entire yearly electricity consumption. Not bad for a five minute shut-down.

Can we do it?

Because of shut down sequences and boot times for the servers, see the chart above: 5 minutes of total power out would actually result in 10 minutes of website inactivity.

The other concern is whether or not it would violate our shop-partner T&C’s. We are actively choosing to disable our partner store’s. Occasionally we have may accidentally have some moments of down-time or slowness when we are fixing things or doing upgrades, but they are part of the normal course of running the service not deliberate action on our part. Our shop-partner t&c states that

“*(3) Further, Spreadshirt does not insure that the operation of the Partner site will be uninterrupted and error-free; Spreadshirt holds no liability for the resulting possible interruptions or errors.* ”

So while it would seem legally sound, there is still potential dis-satisfaction from the shop-partners who run legitimate, and essentially separate businesses using our servers. So its lost revenue for them as well (approx 200,000 stores). Otherwise some of the servers would still need to be up and the power usage not zero. On the other hand no serious shop-partner would be angry about indirectly participating in our noble attempt to save the world, right?

There is also a problem in achieving the zero power goal. In order to restart the servers and not have someone physically at the electricity grid we would need to leave the remote system on which consumes 40w. So the aim of total power out would be very difficult to achieve without getting agreement from the electricity supplier that they would physically reboot it for us when the time is up.

Should we do it?
A potential problem could also be if enough people joined the initiative, some energy suppliers (hello power surge) could get harmed if we all switch ON their power again at the same time. The initiative would have to be very successful for this to be a problem though.

Well, as long as we are alone, this is just one goofy idea we’re looking into. We think the electricity saving warrants the effort, its just a small gesture designed to start a discussion and promote awareness. Internet companies pose a significant problem, we are always available, we have no down-time. Perhaps this would start a discussion about the damage we do, and how we configure our businesses to minimise the damage we cause on the environment.
How much electricty would Google or Yahoo be able to save if they just switch off 1% of their capacity - What do you reckon? Would any other internet businesses or individuals join us in this?