Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard that it says will save billions of kilowatt-hours of energy annually, according to the New York Times. In a white paper being presented today at the Intel Developer Forum, two leading data center designers at Google will call for a shift from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12-volt standard. Although voltage conversion would still take place on the PC motherboard, the simpler design of the new power supply would make it easier to achieve higher overall efficiencies.
The Google proposal is similar in its intent to an existing effort by the electric utility industry to offer computer makers financial incentives for designing more efficient power supplies for personal computers.
The story by the Times' John Markoff cites data from to EPRI Solutions, an energy research and consulting firm, that over 2.5 billion AC/DC power supplies are used in the United States and 6 to 10 billion worldwide. Currently, EPRI said, power supplies account for more than 2 percent of the nation's electricity consumption and that more efficient design could cut use in half, saving nearly $3 billion in electricity costs.
