| You're getting a lot of replies but I don't see anyone answering the initial questions. Some really rough math for playing video games: Assuming I'm playing with someone across the country, I hop 13 routers in a quick traceroute. Assuming each router is commercial hardware (~400W) and my traffic completely saturates them, that's 5,200W. Plus the two machines at the end of each line, assuming they're beefy gaming PCs/servers with 1,000W power supplies at 100% load just for this game. That's 2,000W. Playing a 30 minute Starcraft game comes to 3.6kWh, or two orders of magnitude less than a bitcoin transaction. It's almost certainly less than that since my assumptions were very conservative. ~~~ For something live like a concert, a 54,000 sqft hall uses about 1,100 kWh of power per day (lighting, HVAC). Plus 15kW of speakers for a 6 hour concert is 1,190 kWh. Divided by the 6000 people attending, is 0.2 kWh per attendee. Adding a 10 mile solo drive per person is about 3 kWh. Or again about 2 orders of magnitude less. ~~~ These aren't good comparisons when I could do hundreds of each of the activities you listed for the cost of one transaction. |