Photocopier energy consumption at night

[stavroshamster]

Hi,

I work at an independent research organisation that sits within a UK university, and I'm currently in charge of our office's environmental policy. We had been turning the photocopier off overnight to try to save energy but then have had this email from the photocopier company:

"if you switch your device off overnight the system often tries to contact the device overnight to see what it’s current toner/drum levels are – if it cannot contact the device you won’t get any replacement cartridges sent. It also wastes more electricity & toner by switching the device off and on than it does by leaving it to sort itself out – it has a very clever energy management system built in, plus we set wake & sleep timers to help further"

This flies in the face of energy saving advice given by reputable sources, and therefore I was interested (particularly from those of you who know about this sort of thing?) whether the company are actually accurate to say that it wastes less energy keeping it on overnight...?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Get a power meter and get a rough estimation of idle power consumption??

[kalniel]

I can imagine they're right, if the machine performs tests and re-initialises toner or whatever it has to do when you turn it on. Just a question of whether the energy involved in that is more than the energy lost in standby mode over night. Only way to check would be a wall meter probably.

[herulach]

Just pulled the spec sheet on one of the canon mfds we have in the office. consumption in use peaks at 1.5kw, so say its 1kw warming up (because no feeders/scanner running) which it spends about 30s doing from a cold boot.
Total consumption = 0.083 kWh.

Sleep mode is rated at 2.8W (0.0028kW) so if you're running it say 15 hours in sleep mode (8-5) thats about 0.04 kWh.

IIRC boiling 1L of water uses about 0.1 kWh. so as far as environmental policies go, get a single printer/photocopier if you don't have one, and make one less brew/day.

[peterb]

This flies in the face of energy saving advice given by reputable sources, and therefore I was interested (particularly from those of you who know about this sort of thing?) whether the company are actually accurate to say that it wastes less energy keeping it on overnight...?

I suppose that depends on how reputable the source is, whether they have considered every device, and how old the advice is as manufacturers have become more energy aware. As generic advice goes, it is probably better not to leave devices (certainly older devices) in standby - but in individual cases, I would say "it depends".

(a subject for research for your research group? )

[Tumble]

My devices (that are remotely monitored) often communicate with the server at midnight. That being said - if they don't, then they will ping the server at the earliest opportunity they get. Usually they don't say much other than "Hey! I'm here!!" and will generally only communicate warnings like low toner, service calls when they actually appear on the ops panel in front of the customer anyway. So our device don't mind being switched off at night. The flip side of that is, manufacturers are being squeezed ever tighter by the EU on power consumption. This has other benefits, like quieter operation from more efficient motors etc but mostly the power use in standby/sleep mode is massively reduced. there are also different sleep modes that can be utilised, so you can tweak how deep you want the thing to go, from stone cold dead (power off) to just turning the high power bits like motors & fuser units off.

[TheAnimus]

I believe them.

Most printers of any kind do not have a RTC (real time clock) that can exist without mains power.

This means the device has no idea if its been switched off for 1 min, 1 day, or 1 year.

As such they generally air on the side of (ink/toner consuming) caution. They will flush anything that could possibly be spend.

A miscreant I knew wrote a malicious computer program to send endless clean commands to the printer in an unloved teachers office. This drained the device very swiftly. Most printers tend to do a kind of clean cycle on power on.

[Tumble]

I believe them.

Most printers of any kind do not have a RTC (real time clock) that can exist without mains power.

This means the device has no idea if its been switched off for 1 min, 1 day, or 1 year.

As such they generally air on the side of (ink/toner consuming) caution. They will flush anything that could possibly be spend.

A miscreant I knew wrote a malicious computer program to send endless clean commands to the printer in an unloved teachers office. This drained the device very swiftly. Most printers tend to do a kind of clean cycle on power on.

Mine know how long they've been off for - battery backup on the SSD/NVRAM. We can also tailor the stabilisation/cleaning process to the individual customer's needs, so they don't use loads of toner in that process. But as I pointed out in my previous post - EU regulations are properly squeezing consumption targets, so these things are just getting more efficient - which includes things like toner usage as well as power, as there's environmental issues with recycling toner cartridges etc. Use less = less waste = everyone wins!