Switching off unused fax machines at FAU
As part of the #FAUspartEnergie campaign, we have received numerous proposals. Among other things, the idea was also raised to switch off unused fax machines in order to reduce power consumption. This was a very good idea, but it proved more difficult than initially thought to implement. To find out which fax machines are not used, we wanted to send a questionnaire to all existing fax machines. Unfortunately, there was no complete list of all fax machines and the associated fax numbers (or it was partly still on index cards), so we focused on numbers that were entered manually in UnivIS. This list included almost 3000 fax numbers of various formatting for all persons and institutions at FAU. After the conversion into a standard format, the deletion of duplicates and foreign numbers, we were left with about 800 fax numbers for devices in Erlangen and Nuremberg (excluding Universitätsklinikum Erlangen).
In comparison, 800 fax machines consume around 45,000 kWh of electricity per year, equivalent to the annual consumption of 30 single households.
However, there were still more than 100 numbers that could not be clearly assigned. Therefore, we apologize if our fax reached you incorrectly! If you did not receive a questionnaire by fax, but still want to shut down your fax machine, please fill out this form and send it to project-green-office@fau.de. Thank you for your cooperation. P.S.: According to the scope of our query, we expect an additional total power consumption of about 8 kWh, which corresponds to 0.02% of the annual power consumption of the fax machines. Here you can find out more about paper saving at FAU.