Newsletter Archive

Printers

Computer printers come in three main types; dot matrix, laser and ink/bubble jet.

The dot matrix type are rather obsolete now for most applications except for continuous sheet type printing. Our large, wide carriage unit is rated at 120W on the compliance label. Smaller A4 size ones are rated around 60W.

Laser printers are the most expensive and power hungry of the lot. Our small Xerox AP5 unit (5 pages/minute) is rated at 480W. It uses around 0.41kWh/day when left on standby for eight hours a day and printing about fifty pages a day. Our large Mita Vi 230 laser printer/photocopier (23 pages/minute) is rated at 1000W. On a typical eight hour day it uses 1.2kWh/day to print around 260 pages.

Laser printers require a good quality sine wave inverter with a good surge ability. The above power consumptions are measured on the AC side.

In recent times, the ink/bubble jet printers have taken over the 'home' market. I recently purchased a small Canon BJC-1000SP bubble jet for the princely sum of AUD$119. While on standby, I could not detect any power consumption; when printing it used a maximum of 25W (about 20W average).

This power consumption was measured on the DC side of my SE22 inverter (whilst the computer was on). I'd suggest that for the average home user printing a few pages a day this power consumption is negligible.