Europe Adopts Rules To Reduce Energy Consumption Of External Power Supplies
The European Commission has adopted a new regulation to improve the energy performance of external power supplies, which is expected to cut their electricity losses by nearly a third by 2020. The expected resulting savings of 9 TWh is said to be enough to power Lithuania for a year and will reduce annual CO2 emissions by more than three million tonnes.
"This ecodesign measure will drastically improve the energy performance of external power supplies, which everybody uses together with many household and office products. Setting ambitious energy performance requirements for products is an important contribution to improving Europe's energy efficiency," said Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.
The regulation sets requirements for the energy efficiency of external power supplies. They convert power input from the mains power source into lower voltage output for household and office products such as mobile and cordless phones, notebook computers, modems etc. The requirements address both the "active" efficiency, i.e. the efficiency when power is supplied to for example a notebook when being actually used, and the "no-load" power consumption, i.e. the power which the supply still uses when for instance the notebook is not plugged in.
With no load, the rules will initially limit the wasted power to 0.5W, and in 2011 that limit will be lowered to 0.3W for power supplies with a useful output of less than 51W. That lower limit will apply to chargers for mobile phones and digital music players, for example. While the no-load rules apply to all external power supplies, some of the less energy-hungry devices connected to them will be exempt from other regulations limiting standby power. That step was taken to avoid posing too great a burden on manufacturers.
For devices sold after next April, strict rules will come into force limiting the energy that the power supplies can waste – and the regulations will tighten again in April 2011. External power supplies rated at 51W or more must be at least 86% efficient. Power supplies with an output of more than 6V must meet a slightly higher standard, 87%. This is about the same level of efficiency already demanded of energy-efficient internal power supplies found in servers in data centers. Power supplies rated 1W must be 56% efficient (or 62% if the output is more than 6V). There’s a sliding scale for those rated between 1 and 51W.
These requirements come into force in two steps in 2010 and 2011, and correspond to internationally recognized efficiency criteria, which are achieved by models with significantly enhanced efficiency compared to a current average model.
