Description:

What Is This Measure?

More than 25% of total energy consumed in US office buildings is used to power plug-in devices, many of which continue to draw power even when turned off. Advanced power strips (APS) that employ pre-programmed timers to de-energize such devices significantly reduce power usage:  26% at workstations and 50% in printer rooms and kitchens.

Special Considerations

Load-sensing and combination controls provided limited energy savings and relatively high simple payback. One reason for this is that when applied to kitchens or printer rooms, load-sensing control aggregates power-state data from APSs in surrounding workstations. Because all workstation APSs are monitored in search of a “master” device whose threshold would de-energize auxiliary devices, “slaves” are de-energized only when all workstations are de-energized, which seldom occurs if occupants are present.

See GSA’s Green Proving Ground for more details on the field demonstration findings.