BERLIN, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- With the introduction of the 5G mobile communications standard, the energy consumption of data centers would increase "drastically," according to a study published by the German energy company E.ON on Tuesday.
By 2025, the introduction of 5G would increase the already "rapidly" growing electricity demand of data centers in Germany by up to 3.8 terawatt hours (TWh), said the study conducted by the Institute for Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN) of the RWTH Aachen University.
The additional energy required would be enough to supply around 2.5 million people in Germany for one year, according to E.ON.
New technical possibilities for companies and consumers, such as self-propelled robots which network and exchange information with other machines are the "trigger" for the projected increase in energy consumption in Germany, E.ON stated.
According to the study, new technical possibilities would require many additional smaller local data centers, many of which would act as intermediate stations to the large data centers.
By 2030, up to 13 percent of the world's power consumption would come from data centers, said Karsten Wildberger, member of E.ON's Board of Management, adding that the sustainable energy required could already be generated in an environmental friendly way today.
With the increased need for energy generation, using the waste heat from data centers was also becoming an important issue. Today, around 13 TWh of electricity are converted into heat in German data centers, which have "simply been released into the environment unused to date," according to E.ON.
Only 19 percent of German data centers use some of their waste heat, for example for heating and hot water supply in their own buildings, according to the study.
"Waste heat is valuable energy," stressed Wildberger, adding that data centers in Germany should be utilized to "supply heat to housing estates and entire city districts."
