ENERGY EFFICIENCY Flashcards
What is the best way to ensure investment flows towards low-carbon emitting plants?
Using electricity when the carbon intensity is low.
What is energy?
Energy is the ability to do work and can be in different forms such as heat, electrical, and chemical.
How is electricity produced?
Electricity is secondary energy converted from another energy type.
What consumes electricity in software?
All software, from mobile applications to data center operations.
What is one of the best ways to reduce electricity consumption in software?
Making applications more energy efficient.
What should green software practitioners focus on?
Taking responsibility for energy consumed by their products and designing them to consume as little as possible.
What is the final step in the energy efficiency chain?
Ensuring the end user of the product is not creating unnecessary emissions.
How can batching jobs help in energy efficiency?
By taking advantage of energy proportionality.
How is most electricity produced?
Through burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas.
What is a common misconception about electricity?
That it is clean because it doesn’t directly dirty our hands or require exhaust pipes for devices.
What is the single most significant cause of carbon emissions?
Energy supply from burning fossil fuels.
What should be our goal if we want to be carbon efficient?
To be energy efficient by using the least amount of energy possible per unit of work.
What are the types of low-carbon energy sources?
Clean energy, green energy, and renewable energy.
What is clean energy?
Energy that doesn’t produce carbon emissions, e.g., nuclear.
What is green energy?
Energy sourced from nature.
What is renewable energy?
Energy sourced from sources that will not expire, e.g., solar, wind.
How is energy measured?
Energy is measured in joules (J).
How is power measured?
Power is measured in watts (W), where 1 watt is one joule per second.
What is a kilowatt-hour (kWh)?
A measure of energy corresponding to one kilowatt of power sustained for one hour.
What is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)?
A metric to measure data center energy efficiency.
What does a PUE close to 1.0 signify?
Nearly all energy is used by computing equipment.
What does a PUE of 2.0 indicate?
An additional watt of IT power is required for cooling and distributing power for every watt used by IT equipment.
How does energy proportionality relate to computer utilization?
The more we utilize a computer, the more efficient it becomes at converting electricity to practical operations.
What is the static power draw of a computer?
The amount of electricity drawn when in an idle state.
Why do PCs, laptops, and end-user devices have power-saving modes?
To save on electricity when the device is idle.
What is the carbon cost of an idle server?
Carbon cost from both the embedded carbon and its inefficient utilization.
What is equivalent to building an energy-efficient application?
Building a carbon-efficient application.
What is a step in the right direction for green software practitioners?
Quantifying the energy consumption of an application.
What is power usage efficiency (PUE) in the cloud space?
The overhead energy used by the hardware where software is running.
How does understanding energy proportionality help green software practitioners?
It provides insight into how their application behaves with respect to energy consumption in the real world.
