Navigating international efficiency mandates

The European Commission, Directorate-General for Energy and Transport, is the over-arching organization for energy efficiency standards in the EU. It figures energy savings from a combination of efficiency regulations in terms of Mtoe, million tons of oil equivalent. It has set a target for its regulations of saving 9% of the energy otherwise consumed by 2017.
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Standards, standards, everywhere. That could be the refrain for those who are designing the next generation of energy-efficient products. Whether it's power supplies, white goods, motorized equipment, or TV sets, there is a whole host of mandates that, one way or another, specify minimum power efficiencies.

Problem: There is no such thing as a global efficiency standard. Each region of the world tends to tailor its efficiency mandates in ways reflecting its ecopolitical environment and the lifestyle of its population. So designers who build systems for worldwide markets must navigate a variety of region-specific dictates.

“Europe's focus appears a bit more environmental, toward the restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) and toward Green,” says Moe Kabiri, applications engineer at Cosel (San Jose, Calif.), a power-supply manufacturer. “The emphasis is on components, more than efficiency. Power-factor correction (PFC) is important, but noise emission is more of a concern. In contrast, there are no laws in the U.S. that demand enforcement of harmonic distortion. And no U.S. agency is actually responsible for PFC (a related but separate issue).”

Indeed, electrical specs are in fair agreement across the various global standards bodies. But they're not close enough overall in most cases to permit inventorying, say, a single-platform, universal power supply design.

At the same time, there's notable progress in both the electrical and environmental arenas. The standby spec of 1 W for portable supplies, considered a formidable challenge little more than a decade ago, is well on its way to being supplanted by a 0.3-W metric or less, even for some power supply designs delivering several hundred watts. Similar trends are in place for industrial motors and lighting systems. And there is an increasing emphasis on tightening the “equipment envelope;” i.e., the infrastructure of office buildings and installations that house power equipment. This movement is struggling for official status across the U.S. If what has happened with other efficiency standards is any indication, designers of equipment for overseas markets will soon have to contend with similar measures.

So near but yet so far

The engine for standards development consists of a complicated mix of voluntary and mandatory documents and standards groups that feed off each other. In the U.S., many efficiency standards are voluntary. In other parts of the world (particularly Europe), they tend to be mandatory. Regardless of their origins, most standards are the product of lengthy discussions and complicated negotiations. It is not unusual for a typical standards document to comprise perhaps 30 different product categories.

Though different regions generally enact their own standards, there is often a lot of commonality with standards adopted elsewhere. That's because standards bodies tend to mimic the best practices spelled out in specifications adopted by other parts of the world. So it is not a bad strategy for product developers to “follow the leader” when it comes to efficiency standards. Good ideas tend to migrate around the world even if requirements aren't completely harmonized.

But there are on the order of 20 different standards groups worldwide. It is tough to get the national organizations overseeing these groups to agree on mandatory, universal adoption of their output. Nevertheless, there are signs efficiency standards are moving forward worldwide. “All industrialized nations recognize that energy consumption is going to continue to escalate, and the creation of new generating stations is not the sole answer. Energy efficiency has to be an equal partner to reconcile sustainability,” says Terry Drew, Director of Energy Efficiency for CSA International (Ontario, Canada), which tests products for compliance to national and international standards, and issues certification marks for qualified products. “Everyone is coming from the same viewpoint. It's more a matter of implementing or developing regulations at various stages or rates.”

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