Cloud Data Centers Use 30 Billion Watts of Power

And they probably don't need to! The Times has been digging in to this one for the past year, and they published their findings over the weekend. The most damning stat: only 6 to 12% of that power is actually put to work serving data. The rest is reserve capacity for traffic spikes. That's the price of 100% uptime.

By
Russell Brandom
by Russell Brandom

BuzzFeed Contributor

Cloud Data Centers Use 30 Billion Watts of Power

nytimes.com

And they probably don't need to! The Times has been digging in to this one for the past year, and they published their findings over the weekend. The most damning stat: only 6 to 12% of that power is actually put to work serving data. The rest is reserve capacity for traffic spikes. That's the price of 100% uptime.

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