Office equipment is expected to be the fastest-growing segment of commercial energy use over the next 20 years, yet many aspects of office equipment energy use are poorly understood. User behavior, such as turning off devices at night or enabling power management, influences energy use to a great extent. The computing environment also plays a role both in influencing user behavior and in the success of power management. Information about turn-off rates and power management rates for office equipment was collected through a series of after-hours audits in commercial buildings. Sixteen businesses were recruited, including offices (small, medium and large offices in a variety of industries), schools, and medical buildings in California, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. The types and power states of office equipment found in these buildings were recorded and analyzed. This article presents these data for computers, monitors, printers, copiers, fax machines, scanners and multi-function devices. These data can be used to improve estimates of both energy consumption for these devices and savings from energy conservation efforts. *Corresponding author. Fax: 1-510-486-4247. Email address: cawebber@lbl.gov (C.A. Webber).
During the past three years, working with more than 150 organizations representing public and private stakeholders, EPRI has developed the Electricity Technology Roadmap. The Roadmap identifies several major strategic challenges that must be successfully addressed to ensure a sustainable future in which electricity continues to play an important role in economic growth. Articulation of these anticipated trends and challenges requires a detailed understanding of the role and importance of reliable electricity in different sectors of the economy. This report is intended to contribute to that understanding by analyzing key aspects of trends in the economic value of electricity reliability in the U.S. economy.We first present a review of recent literature on electricity reliability costs. Next, we describe three distinct end-use approaches for tracking trends in reliability needs: 1) an analysis of the electricity-use requirements of office equipment in different commercial sectors; 2) an examination of the use of aggregate statistical indicators of industrial electricity use and economic activity to identify high reliability-requirement customer market segments; and 3) a case study of cleanrooms, which is a cross-cutting market segment known to have high reliability requirements. Finally, we present insurance industry perspectives on electricity reliability as an example of a financial tool for addressing customers' reliability needs.iv
This paper presents the results of 11 after-hours walk-throughs of offices in the San Francisco CA and Washington D.C. areas. The primary purpose of these walk-throughs was to collect data on turn-off rates for various types of office equipment (computers, monitors, printers, fax machines, copiers, and multifunction products). Each piece of equipment observed was recorded and its power status noted (e.g. on, off, low power). Whenever possible, we also recorded whether power management was enabled on the equipment. The floor area audited was recorded as well, which allowed us to calculate equipment densities.We found that only 44 percent of computers, 32 percent of monitors, and 25 percent of printers were turned off at night. Based on our observations we estimate success rates of 56 percent for monitor power management and 96 percent for enabling of power management on printers.
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