How to Calculate Your Printer Power Consumption?

Calculate Your Printer Power Consumption:

Whether you talk about recycling your printer or turning the lights off when you go out of your room, there is always a way in which you can help the environment. The spiritual virtue always says to contribute to the wellbeing of the next generation. Isn't that true? By recycling or saving energy, you are essentially cutting down your own expenses and this is how it becomes economical.

Gradually, these total savings keep adding over a period of a year or even a few months. This is the reason why most of the organisation are equipped with systems and policies to facilitate power consumption. Above that, do you know how to calculate your printer power consumption?

There are multiple modes of saving power like application of CFL lighting, creating functional architecture, and setting systemic solutions. Well, this blog is relevant to discussing about printer power consumption.

What Is The Printer Power Consumption Measured In?

Prior learning to calculate your printer power consumption, you must know its unit of measurement. Generally, power consumption is calculated in terms of kilowatts consumer over a period of time. Therefore, kilowatts per hour becomes the main unit of measurement of printer power consumption. So, to calculate your printer power consumption, you need to know how many thousand watts your printer consumes in one hour.

However, one needs to realize that the printer’s power consumption totally depends on the mode it is working. Like, most printers offer the ‘on’ mode, the ‘standby’ mode, and the ‘sleep’ mode. The ‘on’ mode activates when your printer is printing, the ‘standby’ mode works when the printer is waiting to print, while the ‘sleep’ mode acts when the printer becomes tired of waiting for your print command and shut downs.

This ‘on’ mode is more power hungry, but the ‘sleep’ mode consumes the least.

How to Calculate your Printer Power Consumption?

The best method to understand or learn to calculate your printer power consumption is using an example. Assume that you own an HP LaserJet 4250 printer. This particular printer comes with a power rating of 5 amps for 230 volt models i.e. Australian models. This means that the printing wattage of HP LaserJet 4250 is 675 watts, which is equal to .675 kilowatts.

Optionally, you can choose to take 1.15 kilowatts or 0.675 kilowatts which is up to you. Well, this example only illustrates purposes and is not the certified printer power consumption value of the HP LaserJet 4250.

Normally, the standby printer power consumption value of the HP LaserJet 4250 is near to 20 watts or 0.02 kW, while the sleep mode printer power consumption value is approx 18 watts or 0.018 kW. Moreover, the speed of the HP LaserJet 4250 is 45 pages per minute (specifically for letter size sheets) which is what we’ll pick. Rest, we will assume that your monthly printing volume to be 100,000 pages. So, here's how to calculate your printer power consumption:

Calculating printer power consumption:

• 5 amps x 230 volts = 1150 watts = 1.15 kilowatts
• Finding print volume per hour:
• 45 pages x 60 minutes = 2700
• Printer prints for:
• 100,000 pages per month / 2700 per hour = ~ 37 hours.

Let's make few more assumptions here. Firstly, your printer is on standby mode for about 75 percent of the time i.e. it is not printing. Next, your printer is in sleep mode for 25 percent of the time, which means that it is not printing.

Printer is on standby for:

• 720 hours (per month) – 37 hours of printing x 75% = 512.25 hours

Printer is sleeping for:

• 720 hours (per month) – 37 hours of printing x 25% = 170.75 hours
• So, we are very close to a final value of printer power consumption. Now, we will multiply the hours worked, with the power rating for each mode.
• Power consumption while printing:
• 37 hours x 1.15 kW = 42.55 kilowatts per hour
• 512.25 hours x 0.02 kW = 10.24 kilowatts per hour
• 170.75 hours x 0.018 kW = 3.07 kilowatts per hour

Lastly, you can add up these three values to calculate your printer power consumption at your home or business. In this case, the total value is 55.86 kilowatts per hour. Furthermore, to calculate the cost, you need to multiply this total value with whatever charges you’re paying in your region. This gives the total amount of money you’re paying as power bills to keep your printer running.

Though there are numerous free online calculators that you can use to find your printer power consumption, but we can't rely on their reliability. So, our suggestion is to make and do your own calculations as it's more dependable and reliable that way. Hope this tutorial to calculate your printer power consumption is useful and effective.