1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to an image forming apparatus connected to a power monitoring apparatus via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been concern about global warming caused by an increase in greenhouse effect gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane gas, etc., in the atmosphere. Thus, there is a strong need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emission that may cause the global warming. A large amount of carbon dioxide is exhausted at electric power plants to generate electric power. Therefore, there is also a demand for a reduction in electric energy generation.
Thus, there is a demand to limit electric energy supplied from electric energy plants to facilities. Also from the point of view of reducing cost, it is required to reduce the electric energy consumption.
In view of the above, various techniques have been proposed to reduce the total electric energy consumption in a facility. For example, it has been proposed to use a server to manage the amount of electric energy consumed by a plurality of apparatuses/devices connected to a particular network such that the plurality of apparatuses/devices operate effectively and stably.
More specifically, data is stored which indicates the amount of electric energy consumed every month by each apparatus (the cumulative sum of electric energy consumed in each month) connected to a network, and the amount of electric energy which will be consumed in this month is predicted based on the amounts electric energy consumed in the past (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-159298).
When an image forming apparatus is operated continuously, a color misregistration, a density shift, or other errors may occur due to various factors such as an increase in temperate inside the image forming apparatus, which may result in degradation in image quality. Therefore, the image forming apparatus needs to be periodically subjected to a calibration as to a color misregistration correction, a density shift correction, etc. To reduce electric energy consumed during a calibration operation, it is known to turn a fixing heater to a completely-off level or to a low temperature level during the calibration operation (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-017459).
As the frequency of use of the image forming apparatus increases, it is necessary to increase the number of times the calibration is performed to maintain high image quality. However, the increase in the frequency of the calibration results in an increase in electric energy consumption. In an environment in which the maximum electric energy consumption is limited, the increase in the frequency of the calibration results in a great reduction in remaining electric energy allowed to be consumed.