If whatever you are designing right now needs a power supply and you want to sell it, you’ll have to take account of energy-saving legislation arriving from both sides of the Atlantic. Whilst some of the legislation is still in its infancy, it will pay to understand and embrace it now. And, since it is aimed at saving power, it could have a positive effect on our environment. Initially, the legislation will affect higher volume products, but will gradually work its way down to any product that uses electricity.
The two key legislative programmes that are beginning to impact upon us are the embryonic European Energy-using Programme (EuP) and the established Energy Star programme developed in the USA around 12 years ago. Both progammes are designed to reduce carbon emmissions by cutting the amount of energy used, which also results in significant cost saving to the consumer. This continues to mean a drive towards more efficient and more intelligent power supplies of all sizes. There are many sources of information about both programmes so just a little information is all that is needed here.
Europe’s Energy-using Products directive looks set to come into force later this year and, unlike Energy Star, has been developed to ‘govern’ the lifetime ecological performance – including power consumption – of a very broad range of products. It is still not clear which products will fall under the scope of directive but if past experience is anything to go by, you can be sure that more and more will be added as time goes on.
At its root, the directive can cover any product that consumes electricity, fossil fuels or renewable energy sources during its use and is explicitly intended to take in component parts and sub-assemblies of relevant products.
Energy Star began as a voluntary labelling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Computers and monitors were the first labelled products and, today, the Energy Star label is now on major appliances, office equipment, lighting, home electronics, and more. You’ll have noticed an increasing number of power supplies ‘designed to meet the requirements of the Energy Star programme’ coming on to the market.
Over the past decade, Energy Star has been a driving force behind the more widespread use of such technological innovations as LED traffic lights, efficient fluorescent lighting, power management systems for office equipment, and low standby energy use.
I’d like to take a guess that each reader of this magazine has at least five ‘external’ power adaptors scattered around the home – and that’s without those they use at work. These adaptors, or battery chargers, take mains electricity and provide cell phones, laptops, MP3 players, cameras and so on with power. They are produced ‘to a budget’ and are generally not the most efficient power supplies money can buy.
The Americans, who are good at producing statistics, reckon there are 1.5 billion such adaptors in the US today using a staggering 207 billion kWh/year which they estimate to be six percent of the national electricity bill. That’s about $17bn a year.
With reportedly over one billion external power adaptors shipped annually, it is not surprising that the Energy Star has started predominantly with low power external and PC power supplies. With some of the designs of external adaptors having efficiencies of only 50-70% it is easy to see that major savings in energy, and therefore carbon emissions, can be made. I believe that the target standby power for external power supplies below 10W is <0.3W and for those from 10 to 250W, <0.5W. If power supplies are made to operate on both 115VacC and 230Vac they will also need to conform at both input voltages.
The challenge facing the power supply industry today is how to design and build products like these so that they make better use of energy, particularly when plugged-in but not providing power.
My own comany is actively looking for all new products introduced in the future to meet these requirements and we expect any new legislation to cover all electronic power supplies manufactured in the future to meet very stringent requirements. We are currently working on new designs for products in the 400W to 2,000W area and increased efficiency and low standby power will have to be taken into consideration for these products. However, with all the extra constraints being placed on designers it is hard to imagine that this won’t have a detrimental effect on the price of power supplies, at least in the short term.
Peter Clarke is managing director of Powersolve Electronics