It's midnight -- Is your copier on?: Energy Star copier performance

Conference · Wed Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:20006329

Nordman, B; Piette, M A; Pon, B; Kinney, K

In the US, copiers use about 7 TWh/year of electricity, and a similar amount of energy is embodied in the estimated 2.2 million tons/year of paper used in copiers. These cost the economy about $500 million/year for the electricity and $2.2 billion/year for paper. The US EPA launched the ENERGY STAR copier program in 1995 to save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from copiers. This study evaluated the performance of ENERGY STAR copiers to assess the energy savings they currently achieve and the potential for increasing the savings. The authors defined methods for auditing and monitoring copiers and carried them out on 228 and 11 machines respectively. About 30% of both ENERGY STAR and conventional copiers were left on at night; while most conventional copiers were in a low-power mode, most compliant machines were fully off. Extrapolating these findings to the entire US copier stock results in higher electricity use than previous estimates, due to the night and weekend status and longer work days. However, this also implies a greater potential for saving energy with power management. The authors estimate current savings at 570 GWh/year. The main effect of the program is not to change power used in each operating mode, but to change the amount of time spent in each mode. A survey of users found general satisfaction with compliant copiers. Enabling of default duplex on two copiers raised their duplexing rate by 15% and 20% respectively. The full report is available at http://eetd.LBL.gov/EA/Buildings.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab., CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy; Environmental Protection Agency
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 20006329
• Report Number(s): CONF-980815--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
ELECTRIC POWER
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
OFFICE FURNITURE
PERFORMANCE
PHOTOCOPYING