Wanted: Solutions for Power Problems

A new article describes how solid state drives (SSDs) prove to be more power hungry than traditional hard drives, while another article disputes these findings. India detailed a new climate change plan this week, relying heavily on the development of solar energy to improve its country's carbon footprint. Lastly, a new United Nations report shows that alternative energy investments are on the rise.

Focal Points:

• SSDs are the next generation of mass storage technology offering greater mean time between failures (MTBF) than their traditional hard drive counterparts at significantly dearer cost. Additionally, SSDs are less prone to failure versus hard drive crashes in mobile applications, and are thus being featured on the highest end notebook applications. Many vendors are touting that SSD-equipped notebooks are capable of longer battery lives because solid state drives require less power to read and write data. Unfortunately, SSDs use power whether they are actively performing work or in a state of rest, and thus may actually consume more energy in typical applications according to a Tom's Hardware report entitled "The SSD Power Consumption Hoax."  An article written by Laptop Magazine to validate these findings, takes issue with these findings. Laptop Magazine found that under its real-world condition tests, current generation SSDs lasted approximately 20 minutes longer on battery life than a traditional magnetic hard drive-equipped system.
• Though India only contributes five percent of the world's total carbon emissions, the country has decided to take a proactive stance in reducing its dependency on non-renewable energy sources and becoming a nation that embraces sustainable development. The country has outlined a plan with eight national imperatives, including energy efficiency, solar power usage, sustainable agriculture, and water conservation. Solar energy is the most defined initiative, and the country has set aside land and given approval to numerous companies that will or are already developing solar cell, panel, and wafer technologies. The plan has omitted the crucial elements of budget and design at this point, but it has setup a Council on Climate Change with key stakeholders to begin sorting through specifics.
• A new report out of the United Nations (UN) shows that global investment in sustainable energy research and production is on the rise, totaling $148 billion in 2007. That is a 60 percent gain over 2006 investment, and on its way to a reported $600 billion per year by 2020 according to a consulting firm that participated in the UN research. The report cites changing attitudes of banks, an anticipated U.S. carbon tax, and the new U.S. political administration as contributing factors that will help drive growth and encourage industry innovation from startups and large corporations. Areas for investment include biomass and waste to energy, energy efficiency, solar technologies, wind, and other sustainable areas. Expectations are that developing nations will be a considerable participant in research and development as many are looking for both growth industries and abilities to build out infrastructures where cracks exists.

Experton Group believes statements of power efficiency, and environmental characteristic claims of all kinds, must be evaluated from a holistic perspective using real world conditions. As these areas are still rapidly evolving and not well understood by most individuals, Experton Group sees the tendency for constituencies to make controversial and/or inflated claims to make their agendas appear the most attractive. IT executives should take all such claims with a significant amount of skepticism, and use good judgment and numerous data points that incorporate all relevant components into consideration. For instance, statements regarding environmental superiority should be based on a complete view that includes raw materials gathering, manufacturing, distribution, shipping, energy usage efficiencies, carbon footprint, operational life cycle, and end-of-life disposal/recycling characteristics.
Focus on one single attribute or on unrealistic case scenarios clouds the issues, and can lead to inappropriate decisions. IT executives should ideally require vendors to build out case studies that mimic enterprise use behavior and can be verified and validated to ensure assumptions, models, and conclusions can produce the required benefits.