When consumers have access to real time information such as smart thermostats at home, critical peak demand fell by 27% to 44%.
Watching a live concert or a sports event will consume close to 300 megabytes an hour.
An hour of browsing the Web on a mobile phone consumes roughly 40 megabytes of data.
Some departments, like the Defense Department, have large amounts of spectrum but only use it 1 percent of the time.
Wireless broadband also has been estimated to generate productivity gains—cost reductions for a given level of production—of $28 billion in 2005.
According to research company IDC Energy Insights, North American utilities are expected to spend $10.75 billion on computer hardware, software and services related to the smart grid this year, up from $7.56 billion in 2008.
Noah Horowitz, at the Natural Resources Defense Council, calculated that the nation’s gaming consoles,
like the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the Sony PlayStation 3, now use about the same amount of electricity each year as San Diego, the ninth-largest city in the country.
According to the IEA, building the equivalent of 560 coal-fired power plants
or 230 nuclear plants will be necessary to satisfy the demand that gadgets will require.
Worldwide, consumer electronics now represent 15 percent of household power demand,
and that is expected to triple over the next two decades, according to the International Energy Agency.
14 times more energy is required to sell $100 worth of books for a traditional superstore than for an online bookseller.