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A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

bbc.com

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Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#41

Post by maelito »

pjc50 wrote: post #36
mehrdadn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Holy cow, that is a lot . 1-3 grams of CO2 per single load of a page? Makes me feel guilty about even clicking the article.

The average human breathes out 1g of CO2 every minute and a half. By comparison, average UK cars put out 124.5g for every km driven. It's not nothing, but it's not a lot either. It probably is worth evaluating the electrical efficiency of the tech industry as a whole, both in terms of highly executed code hotspots and entire pieces of business of questionable utility (ad javascript, cryptocurrency proof-of-waste), bu…

Ads and all the services that make a modern Web page should be included in the estimation.

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#42

Post by sephamorr »

mehrdadn wrote: post #25
messo wrote: post #22

> The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Maybe this is what finally could push companies towards making lighter and more efficient websites? At least an estimate of a webpages watt usage (server and client side).

> The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Holy cow, that is a lot . 1-3 grams of CO2 per single load of a page? Makes me feel guilty about even clicking the article.

I'm having a very hard time rationalizing these numbers. Something has to have some very poor assumptions:

Let's assume each page load is ~1mbit, and it's being served from 1000km away. 1mbit may be low, but most of it will presumably be content delivered by a CDN which is far closer than 1000km.

The reference design (which I work on) for 400G DWDM systems are ~100W for 2 transceivers + EDFA + switches, for a standard 80km link. Assuming we hop every 80km (which should be conservative here), we get 3mJ for the energy through the network. The previous generation is probably 10x worse, so ~30mJ.

Let's add the endpoint too; Wifi router + cable modem (12W or rather 3W marginal power since it's running anyway/ 200mbit) = 15mJ

And finally for the server. I'd hope the server could do 1k requests per second, and that should amortize against backends, etc (2k RPS, but frontend + DB backend server, maybe), maybe 150W for the server, so 150mJ.

This gives us 200mJ for a page load. Using California's current (1:28am) emissions for power generation of 0.274 mT/MWh (it's 1/3rd of this during the day), this yields 15ug/request.

Where do the remaining 5 orders of magnitude come from? What am I missing? If TCO/production energy of the server was included, that couldn't more than double it (capex in a datacenter < opex, and if 100% of the server cost was for energy, we could double, but this is wildly conservative)

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#43

Post by barbegal »

sephamorr wrote: post #42
mehrdadn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Holy cow, that is a lot . 1-3 grams of CO2 per single load of a page? Makes me feel guilty about even clicking the article.

I'm having a very hard time rationalizing these numbers. Something has to have some very poor assumptions: Let's assume each page load is ~1mbit, and it's being served from 1000km away. 1mbit may be low, but most of it will presumably be content delivered by a CDN which is far closer than 1000km. The reference design (which I work on) for 400G DWDM systems are ~100W for 2 transceivers + EDFA + switches, for a standar…

Here is the methodology https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does...

I think most of it comes from your client device. Your laptop may be using 50W of power or about 20g of CO2 per hour so reading the article for 6 minutes is ~2g of CO2.

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#45

Post by aembleton »

pjc50 wrote: post #36
mehrdadn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Holy cow, that is a lot . 1-3 grams of CO2 per single load of a page? Makes me feel guilty about even clicking the article.

The average human breathes out 1g of CO2 every minute and a half. By comparison, average UK cars put out 124.5g for every km driven. It's not nothing, but it's not a lot either. It probably is worth evaluating the electrical efficiency of the tech industry as a whole, both in terms of highly executed code hotspots and entire pieces of business of questionable utility (ad javascript, cryptocurrency proof-of-waste), bu…

It's the equivalent of driving 19 metres in an average UK car. That's not far, but that is for a single web page. That seems incredibly high to me.

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#46

Post by aembleton »

sosborn wrote: post #6
just-ok wrote: post #5

It’s honestly a shame that we didn’t keep pursuing sail technology. It’s great that we’re finally getting somewhere environmentally-friendly with ship tech nowadays as in the OP, but if we’d put the same amount of effort to innovate and advance sails like we did steam, I imagine we’d have pretty amazing (and completely green) methods of transport for all but the heaviest cargo loads (and even then, just split the loa…

I’m genuinely curious, what innovations could there possibly be for sails beyond increasing surface area or either the sails or the keel?

Off the top of my head:

- Motorised rotation of the sails to capture the wind.

- Automated tacking.

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#47

Post by maelito »

barbegal wrote: post #43
sephamorr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a very hard time rationalizing these numbers. Something has to have some very poor assumptions: Let's assume each page load is ~1mbit, and it's being served from 1000km away. 1mbit may be low, but most of it will presumably be content delivered by a CDN which is far closer than 1000km. The reference design (which I work on) for 400G DWDM systems are ~100W for 2 transceivers + EDFA + switches, for a standar…

Here is the methodology https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does... I think most of it comes from your client device. Your laptop may be using 50W of power or about 20g of CO2 per hour so reading the article for 6 minutes is ~2g of CO2.

In case someone wants to do the math again :

50W for 1 hour : 50Wh or 0.050kWh

California : 187gCO₂eq/kWh according to https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/US-CAL-CISO

-> 9.35gCO₂eq/h -> 0.16g/min -> 0.935g for 6 minutes

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#48

Post by berkes »

satori99 wrote: post #20
sosborn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m genuinely curious, what innovations could there possibly be for sails beyond increasing surface area or either the sails or the keel?

It is worth noting that rigging and sails for lightweight racing hulls has evolved way beyond anything that has ever been used commercially -- And would look quite weird (though still recognizable) to a 19th C sailor [0]. Also, the material science involved in creating laminated sailcloth is very close to state-of-the-art. Of course, racing yachts go fast because they weigh very little. Also, Kitesails [1] have been…

Skysails[1] sells them commercially. I cannot find how many ships operate those other than two "prototypes"[2]

[1] https://www.skysails-group.com/

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkySails#Treibstoffeinsparung

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#49

Post by berkes »

just-ok wrote: post #11
genocidicbunny wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine there would be that many. Sails just don't provide all that much motive force, and they're far too unreliable (wind dies down, it doesn't matter how much sail you have.) Maybe the GP was thinking more along the lines of general 'green' tech -- wind turbines, solar panels, etc? It would certainly be cool to see more of those to supplement existing propulsion systems on ships, and that would help reduce…

Combining technologies would absolutely be a great way to pivot, as the article shows. Maybe it’s a dumb question, but why don’t we have sails on modern ships as a supplement? I just lament that we basically completely abandoned such a great mechanism (sails) so haphazardly just because coal was cheap & reliable; now the environment pays the price.

Low tech magazine has some practical examples of ships that operate sails in addition to fuel to lower fuel-usage: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/09/sailing-ship-re.html

Re: A new design ship in the Philippines is partly powered by wave energy

#50

Post by reportgunner »

messo wrote: post #22

> The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view. Maybe this is what finally could push companies towards making lighter and more efficient websites? At least an estimate of a webpages watt usage (server and client side).

I was also disappointed with the amount of text compared to the amount of information in the article.

It seemed like every paragraph started with for sure you have been in the waves so you know they are waves

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