Energy Efficient Office Appliances
 |
Office
equipment such as computers, printers and copy machines,
are responsible for an increasing of electricity consumption,
and thereby also responsible for additional increase
in cooling load. Therefore, special emphasis has been
made in the MECM Building to reduce the electricity
consumption for equipment, and a guideline for procurement
of energy efficient office equipment has been produced.Simulation
with the Energy-10 computer tool confirms the significance
of office equipment on the overall energy consumption. |
Using energy efficient office equipment,
the electricity consumption for the equipment can be reduced
from 25 to only 10 kWh per m2 per year. In addition to this,
the cooling load is reduced by further 10 kWh per m2 per year.
The main energy consuming office equipment in modern office
is the Personal Computer, with its screen. Energy consumption
is reduced by purchase of energy labelled computers with software
that automatically reduced energy consumption during idle
periods. Furthermore, flat screens are much more energy efficient
than the traditional bulky CRT screen. Also, flat screens
provide better user comfort with less reflections than the
CRT screens, and they take up much less space on the desk.
Therefore, all in all, the extra cost of flat screen, now
typically less than RM 1,000 can easily be defended from an
overall perspective.
Portable lab top computers are much more energy efficient
than stationary computers because they are optimised for maximum
battery life. The extra price for a lab top compared to a
desktop computer with flat screen is now lesser than RM 1,000.
This extra investment will often be very attractive given
the extra flexibility and given that the energy consumption
per PC reduces to ~ 80 W (with flat screen) and to 30 W for
the laptop. For comparison, energy consumption for stationary
computer with CRT screen is ~ 150W.
CRT
Screen |
LCD
Flat Screen |
Laptop |
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