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Standby Product Profile - Printers (sb200303-printers.pdf - 623 kB)
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In 2002, the Ministerial Council on Energy released "Money isn't all you're saving" a long-term strategy to address excessive standby energy used by consumer appliances and equipment. This strategy is also known as the "1 Watt" standby power plan.
This standby product profile covers printers. The majority of printers today are either inkjet or laser printers, although dot matrix and thermal printers remain the principal types for some specialist applications. There has been a recent trend towards the use of colour printers, particularly inkjet types for domestic/small business applications. Laser printers tend to dominate in commercial applications and where higher printer volumes are required.
Computer printers are sold all over the world with little product differentiation between countries. The main regional variations occur where power supplies are designed for local supply voltages and frequencies. However most printers now have universal power supplies and a local power cord is supplied for the country of sale.
This standby product profile for Printers covers the following broad topics:
To support the preparation of this and other profiles, NAEEEC commissioned store surveys of products in major retail stores during 2001, 2002 and 2003 to collect standby measurements from a wide range of appliances and equipment. The results of these measurements are available in NAEEEC Report 2003/04.
Australian governments have determined to use off and standby consumption as the basis for setting efficiency targets. Furthermore, Australian governments propose to follow the US EPA lead, promoted within the Energy Star scheme. Australia through the Australian Greenhouse Office, has a long-term commitment to working with the Energy Star program and, more generally, working cooperatively within internationally supported product development programs.
Australia will continue support for the international scheme (lead by US EPA) in following the proposed more stringent Energy Star criteria, and the inclusion of off mode limits not greater than 1 Watt for all printers other than large format printers (where the off target will be 3W). Australia proposes to use the standby energy consumption levels to be finalised by Energy Star in 2004 as the target for the new standby criteria. It is likely that these will fall between the levels proposed by US Industry and the top 25% performing products.
Australia proposes to adopt the new Energy Star criteria not earlier than 12 months after they become effective in the US, which at this time is likely to be mid-2005.
The target date in Australia for commencement is therefore mid 2006.
To provide a clear signal of the Australian target and to reinforce international efficiency developments, the new Energy Star criteria will be included as a voluntary requirement in the relevant Australian Standard as soon as possible.
Based on those criteria, Australian government agencies want industry to supply evidence that either:
1. At least 66 % of product available for sale complies with the existing efficiency target in the year 2007 (these levels were set in November 2000); or
2. At least 25% of product available for sale complies with the new more stringent Energy Star requirements by the year 2007 (the USA proposes to meet this target in mid-2005).
The absence of evidence showing printers meeting either target by that year may trigger consideration of stage two of the National Standby Strategy involving mandatory measures.
Government will announce whether this product should be targeted for stage two intervention under the National Standby Power Strategy (involving possible regulatory intervention) or whether the abovementioned actions together with industry intervention have been successful in meeting the target at the NAEEEC Forum in the year: 2008.
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