How to determine the power consumption of your printer and paper

When a professional or an SME buys one or more printers for office, the main concern choosing the model is probably reviewing their technical specifications. The speed connections incorporating the price and capacity of its supplies, the quality you have your documents or the space it will occupy in the office … But there are other aspects that often go unnoticed but most are equally important. The power consumption of the printers and the ecological impact it produces.

Meet the energy efficiency of appliances is the key to save on electricity costs, especially for those companies that use more than one computer in the office. HP has deployed a valuable tool to compare power consumption between different printers or groups of printers (in this case we can also compare the costs of paper). A helper should use when deciding the best option for upgrading office or buying new.

The tool in question is called the HP Carbon Footprint Calculator. Let’s compare the energy consumption and carbon emissions of over 3,000 different models own U.S. company teams and competing models. You can compare individual model by model. But if you have multiple computers, you can also enter all these models and give a comparative option for a possible renewal of equipment.

To start using this tool, simply visit the dedicated website of HP (we offer a download link at end of article). On the right side there are three options for the comparison. The first one, “Individual”, serves as expected to put face to face model HP over another brand team or other manufacturers. The following two options to measure energy expenditure and paper costs two or more printers we have in the office, and discover other options if you are thinking about renewing our fleet of printers.

Individual comparison

We start with the first option, put two teams facing each print to measure their energy consumption and carbon emissions. In this case, one of the two teams must belong to the American company. The first thing is we mark our location and the currency in which we want the results displayed. HP uses a general cost per kWh that we can change if we know the exact prices. After clicking on “Next”, we will get a second window in which we have to choose the two models compared to those who do the comparison. As we can see right away, we will have a very extensive range of equipment to add to the comparison.

Once selected, pressed again on the “Next” button and see the results of energy expenditure in euros (which is frankly useful) and CO2 emissions of the two models. By default, an average of 10,000 printed pages per year and one-time use of five printing equipment used. We can change these settings at the push rods and drag the bottom of the window. No doubt it is a very useful and quick to learn more in depth spending and the models are thinking about buying form.

Quick comparison of the printer fleet

In this case, the comparison is made of two or more computers. Clicked “Quick printer fleet” and choose the location and the currency in which we want the results displayed. In the next window we have to choose how many employees are there in the organization or SMEs and the number of prints produced each year. As an estimate, it takes an average of 10,000 impressions per user per year. If you do not know the exact number or more specific to the actual number of views approach, this number can serve as a standard. Now we have to make with few printers have three different groups, small office printers, a second step of printers’ greater capacity for small workgroups and finally the printers that are designed for more intensive use and workgroups wide.

The window number three of this study shows some practices that can reduce energy consumption. The most interesting points are the option to perform automatic shutdown of equipment after a day of work (“Powering off dialy”) and the fact that most or all teams have the printing feature to print documents on both sheet, saving paper (“HP Universal Print Driver to Increase your duplex rates”). Once chosen these points, we can see an estimate of utility costs and paper and the total price we will have to face every year. After this window we can see how various practices such as use other printers or have tools like HP Web JetAdmin can help reduce spending.

Complete comparison of the printer fleet

The last of the modes allows a deeper spending our printer fleet approach and to compare the cost with other fleet we are thinking of buying. The first step is again to choose what will be the currency in which they are displayed the results and the location of the printer. On the next screen we must choose between the main printer type to be held (on a standard A4 size or larger sizes) and the number of prints made by our printers a year. After pressing “Next”, we have to introduce the different models that are part of our office. On the left we have a box for quick access to HP printer model. Simply type the first letter of the model (e.g. an O range for Officejet Pro) and then look for the model from the drop. This information must be completed with the number of printers of this type (Quantity) and the number of users using this model. After that we press on “Add printer”.

In the menu on the right we can introduce computers that belong to other manufacturers. Once we’re done with this process, we click on “Next”. As in the quick comparison, we can choose between different practices that help save costs. After this preliminary step, the tool will show HP energy expenditure and paper and carbon emissions. After seeing these results can also choose several HP printers to see how the purchase of this equipment can help save on costs to our SMEs. No doubt, this is a very interesting and comprehensive tool to get much more complete expenses that are involved in tasks typical printing idea.