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Printers just keep on consuming power

Printers and multifunctionals consume power even when they are not printing. In sleep mode they consume a relatively small amount, but they only enter sleep mode after a long period of inactivity. Until then, they are in standby mode, consuming a significant portion of the power consumed during printing.

 In action

Printers and multifunctionals consume a significant amount of power after they finish printing a document.
During this time they are in standby mode, waiting for another document to be sent to them. If no other document arrives, the power consumed in standby has been wasted.
They enter sleep mode after a longer period of inactivity.
 

Standing by in standby

Many printers and multifunctionals are configured by their manufacturers to wait in standby mode for fifteen minutes after a document has been printed. Bearing in mind that most documents take less than a minute to print, it is easy to see that more power is consumed in standby than during printing.

In action

In a light workload environment, a printer or multifunctional which waits fifteen minutes in standby mode uses more power in standby than it does printing.
Many printers and multifunctionals are set to wait fifteen minutes by their manufacturer; changing this can save money and reduce environmental impact.
To enter standby or not?
Printers use standby mode to make printing faster. They can print a document as soon as they receive it if they are in standby mode, but take up to a minute (or more) to warm-up if they are in power-saving sleep mode.
In a high-workload environment, where a printer receives documents in quick succession, standby mode makes sense. In quieter environments, it makes more sense to configure the printer to enter sleep mode as soon as possible.

Changing standby and sleep modes

All printers and multifunctionals let you change the amount of time they wait before switching from standby to sleep mode. The process is different for different machines so we can’t provide ‘one size fits all’ instructions. However, we can tell you that the process is usually:
Access the printer or multifunctional’s setup menu
Select the menu for Common or Device settings
Select the option for Sleep timer
Set it to the minimum setting, preferably 1 minute

Automatically changing settings across a network

Making manual changes to the configuration menus of every printer and multifunctional on your network can easily get impractical.
A better option is to use a network configuration tool that lets you change all the machines at once from the comfort of your desk. Different manufacturers have their own configuration tools (for example, WebJetAdmin from HP or KMNet Admin from Kyocera) but they are almost always free.
Once installed, the configuration tool will automatically discover all the manufacturer’s printers and multifunctionals on your network. You should select all of them and set the sleep mode timer to 1 minute in a single command.

In action

Network management utilities such as Kyocera’s KMNet Admin and HP’s WebJetAdmin let you configure the sleep time for numerous network printers and multifunctionals with one command. Such network utilities are usually free but each brand of device usually needs that manufacturer’s own tool.