[LINK] National Broadband Network - except it's not national.

[Alex (Maxious) Sadleir]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 8:52 AM, Tom Worthington
<tom.worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> Gordon Keith wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 May 2010 11:21:28 am Tom Worthington wrote:
>>> Homes will need a powered fibre optic modem for the NBN...
>>
>> Has anyone calculated the power requirements of the NBN for device not in use?  ...
>
> The Australian Government took power consumption into account somewhat
> in the original Request for Proposals for the NBN (ATM ID DCON/08/18,
> Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy,
> 11-Apr-2008).
>
> Respondents were asked for details of power consumption and provisions
> to maximise power efficiency and provision of “sleep mode” for customer
> terminal equipment. But there were no energy efficiency requirements,
> estimates of energy use, or mention of who would pay for the energy or
> carbon tax. I talked about this in Perth in 2008:
> <http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/carbon_neutral_computing/>.
>
> I raised the issue of power for NBN equipment in a talk I gave at the
> World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT 2008) in Kuala Lumpur.
> But this was pointing out that battery backup was required for emergencies:
> <http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/emergency_management/>.
>
> The need for battery backup was incorporated in later NBN planning. This
> then raised the issue of who replaces the batteries:
> <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/05/fibre-to-premises-in-greenfield-estates.html>.
>
> What was not addressed was the additional energy consumption and e-waste
> generated. One idea, which I am sure I mentioned some time, was to take
> advantage of the need for the NBN to run off the grid and power it with
> renewable energy. Because the NBN needs to operate independently of
> mains power in an emergency, it already has much of the investment
> needed for running it on renewable energy. As an example, instead of
> charging batteries from mains power, use a solar cell, or a wind generator.
>

The issue of both battery backup and the power consumption of a
national network of new client side equipment was raised in Estimates
recently - http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S13006.pdf ,
Page 40 or so depending on your PDF viewer.
Senator Conroy mentioned there had been some work done at the
University of Melbourne on the issue of energy efficiency -
http://www.broadband.unimelb.edu.au/research/network/green.html