Network Electricity Use Associated with Wireless Personal Digital Assistants

This article examines the widely cited claim that the network electricity use associated with a wireless personal digital assistant (PDA) is equal to the electricity consumed by a refrigerator. It compiles estimates of the data flows of wireless PDAs and related networks and allocates network and phone system electricity use based on these estimates. It also conducts sensitivity analyses to verify the robustness of these calculations. This analysis demonstrates that the network electricity use associated with a wireless PDA cannot equal that of a typical refrigerator, even under the most extreme assumptions. Our best-estimate case shows network electricity use for wireless PDAs of 0.5 kW⋅h/year, and therefore claims that wireless PDAs use as much electricity as a refrigerator are too high by more than a factor of 1,000. Even in our upper-limit assessment, the electricity used by a new U.S. refrigerator is about 100 times greater than the network electricity use associated with a wireless PDA.