Energy usage of a Printer : Kwh and Cost

If you are wondering how much electricity your printer consumes, Don’t worry, I will explain in detail how to calculate the energy consumption of your printer, regardless of whether you have an old one or a new one.

Suppose we consider that the amount of power that the printer would be using depends on several factors and is not the same for each print or even the printer. Yes! This article will be about the power consumption of the printer that we use in our homes and offices etc.

These factors include the type of printer, its state, and pages being printed per minute. Let’s learn more about it through the article below.

Electricity Usage of Printer:

Printers come in impact and non-impact forms; however, today, non-impact printers are widely used, including laser and inkjet printers.

During printing, an inkjet printer consumes approximately 15 – 30 watts of power, and if it is not printing but is kept in standby mode, then its consumption is just 1 to 5 watts.

On the other hand, A laser Printer’s average power consumption is around 300 – 1500 watts of power, depending Upon the Machine model and brand.

You can calculate the printer power consumption using the calculator parameters, which include:

• Wattage (the rate deciding the power consumption)
• A number of hours your printer is operational.
• Tariff (charging cost per unit)
• Unit of electricity (power that is consumed by the printer in kWh)

Calculating a printer’s power consumption from its Back Label:

You must know that your printer type, brand, specifications, and other similar characteristics can affect the way it consumes power.

You can know the details of the model and brand from the back label of your printer. This can further help you to know the estimated amount of power for your device or watts to be used by that particular model of printer.

Printers which are set in the offices consume more power as compared to the ones we use in our homes. This is due to the specifications, brand, and other changes to the design of the printer that is used for the public and not for a few members.

The normal consumption by both the inkjet and the laser printer is mentioned below in the three possible states:

Let’s take the Canon Color imageCLASS MF632Cdw, for instance; it consumes around 4.1 Amps when given 220 volts.

So, the calculation would be as per the following:

4.1 [Amps] x 220 [Volts] = 902 [Watts] or 0.902 [kW]

The case would change as per sleep and standby mode percentage. You can also determine the per-hour speed by knowing the ppm it prints.

The generic formula would be:

E_(kWh) = P_(W) x Hr / 1000

Manually calculate the power consumption of a printer by following these steps:

There are certain steps that you need to follow so you can track the estimated power being consumed by your specific printer, which totally depends on its type, specs, design, and its mode.

Yes! The printer’s power consumption needs to be calculated on the basis of its three modes. One is the actively printing mode known as the on mode, the other is when you have put it on standby mode, and you might be sending a print command soon. The last one is sleep mode, in which your printer will get bored enough and fall asleep if you have not used it in a while.

First, you need to know that the power consumption of the printer is measured in kilowatts per hour, so basically, it is how many thousand watts are being used by your printer.

For Example, if you want to know the per-hour volume your printing is getting out and has the speed of 50 pages, then you can do the following manually.

Office use Printer (Canon MF730) Energy Consumption:

Printing: 1400 Watts
Standby: 17.7 Watts
Sleep Mode: 0.8 Watts
Paper per min Print: 27 pages x 60 min = 1620
Monthly Copies Volume: 150,000 Pages

Hours Per Month: 720 Hours
Hours Printing: 150,000/1620 (copies per hour)
Approx Copies Per Hour: 92 Hours
Hours Standby:(720-92) x 60% (approx.) = 377 Hours
Hours Sleep mode: (720-92) x 40% (approx.) = 251 Hours

Monthly Power Consumption: Watts printing + Watts Standby + Watts Sleep / 1000
(1400 x 31) + (17.7 x 377) + (0.8 x 251) /100=
43400 + 6673 + 201 /1000 = 50.27 kwh

Use A Energy Meter to calculate Printer power consumption:

As mentioned above, if you know a specific voltage that is being acquired by your particular printer along with the amps, then simply multiply them, and you can get the exact watts.

However, there are other ways through which you can successfully achieve this aim of knowing the power consumed by the printer, like using an Energy meter.

It is a kind of device that, when plugged in with your device, shows its power consumption of it. So, you would need to connect the printer’s plug to this Energy meter. For instance, we have the Kill A Energy meter and then connect the meter to the plug source of the socket.

Through this, you can easily know the electricity you are utilizing on your printer in real-time and as well as when you put your printer in standby mode.

You can get your calculated record in the form of Volts, Amps, Watts, Frequency, and Kilowatt-hours through this Energy meter. Through this, you can find out the per-hour consumption rate as well.

This can be achieved using the formula mentioned below:

kWh consumption/hours of use= kWh per hour consumption rate.

How many watts does a printer use?

As said earlier, the type of printer being used and the category of it depends on the watts it is using. It may vary as per the models and another rate of unit area-wise. However, the process is the same.

In general, if we talk about the printers that are being used in the offices, they are for sure consuming more power than the ones at home because they will be getting more frequent print requests, and they will be simultaneous as well.

So, the requests will be in the print pool, waiting for their time to be processed. For Example, HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479dw power consumed in various modes in the office will be:

550 watts (active printing), 20 watts (ready), 0.7 watts (sleep), 0.7 watts (Auto Off/Wake on LAN, enabled at shipment), 0.06 watts (Auto-off/Manual-on), 0.06 (Manual Off)}

As for the Canon PIXMA MG3620 printer for the home, it is as follows:

16 Watts (USE CASE); 1.4 Watts (Sleep); 0.1 Watts (Off); 0.1 Watts (Auto-off)}

The factors that affect the power consumption of printers:

Power consumed by the devices depends on various types of factors and the kinds of devices it selves. Therefore, it cannot be surely said about a particular device that it will always use the same power or energy to run under the same circumstances.

Overall, the factors that could adversely affect the power being consumed by the printers include the following prominent ones. These are mentioned in relevance to the experiences of the people who use them often.

The type of printer:

The type and design of the printer are one of the major factors on which the power consumption relies. If you are talking about non-impact printers, then there is a difference in the power consumed by both the inkjet and the laser printers.

This can be seen through the table below mentioning the type of printer, with the watts used in active mode and then in standby mode.

Brand and specs:

It also relies on the brand of the printer you are using as different companies set their limited watts range and ppm (pages per minute) speed for their editions of the printers. This further determines their cost and overall market strength.

The specs are also an important part of the printer, and you can see differences in specs on Amazon when you open different HP printers, each varying from the other, either in terms of its speed or the high-tech performance. Some may even vary in the energy being consumed too.

Here are some tips for reducing printer power consumption:

So far, we have shared with you the ways to get towards the power being consumed by the printers and the means that could affect it somehow. Furthermore, it is also important to know how you can control things if possible.

Here by controlling means, reducing the printer power consumption in a way that brings positive effects to the environment and so you can allow some other resources to use the same sort of energy that you have saved from one device.

Well, it is surely possible to reduce the power that is being used by your printer constantly or every day, causing you some extra charges per month. These include the following measures that might help you accomplish your targets. These are:

Look for upgradation:

This is the key point which we use in other utilities in our lives or kitchens or even in our wardrobes; which is that when we see something much better in look and use and at the same time is charging less cost, we just go for it.

Similarly, even when you are not thinking of replacing or changing your printer, it is not a bad idea to look for more energy-efficient model options available in the market.

Use software to incorporate automatic use of the printer:

Yes, there are many tools present with the printers that can help you activate your device and shut it down when you want as per your manageable routine.

This will for sure help in reducing the power consumption by the printer, naturally.

Models of printers and their Wattage

Conclusion:

Printers being the most useful output device for printing documents and other related data has been used by people from all sectors. It has a variety of uses in our society, homes/offices.

Power consumed by the printer is an unnoticeable point for many users who just know how to send a print command. However, there are many factors that determine the power consumed by printers.

This article discusses all those factors, along with the ways through which you can calculate the power consumption of a printer. It also mentions the steps that you could be doing to control it.

FAQs:

References:

• https://us.riso.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/wp-power-consumption.pdf
• https://www.brother.co.uk/printers/laser-printers
• https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/vwa/printers/prnttyp=Laser
• https://spark.iop.org/using-energymeter-measure-power-electrical-circuits