Brammo Owners Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: Richard230 on January 12, 2012, 05:59:24 PM
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According to an article in the business section of my newspaper, written by Dana Hull of mercurynews.com, the California Energy Commission on Thursday will consider adopting the nation's first energy-efficiency standards for battery chargers. The Commission staff says that these new regulations could (eventually) save the state as much as 2,200 GWh per year. The new regulations will cover every form of battery charger, from cell-phone chargers to industrial-sized chargers and would go into effect by February 2013.
The new regulations and related documents can be seen here: http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/battery_chargers/documents/ (http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/battery_chargers/documents/)
Needless to say, charger manufacturers are not happy about the cost and effort to meet this requirement. The Consumer Electronics Association is said to "warn that the proposed regulations could impact product development and innovation". However, the article mentions that "many consumer electronics manufacturers make chargers that already meet the proposed standards".
It sounds to me like California wants all battery chargers to be "smart chargers", which seems like a good idea to me, as I am kind of forgetful and have a tendency to leave stuff plugged in longer than necessary. (I really appreciate my 12V motorcycle battery smart chargers. They are a huge improvement over the old 2A "trickle" chargers that would always boil the acid out of small batteries if left on too long and ruin them.) I think this is a regulation that makes a lot of sense. Plus, the California consumer market is so large that it is likely everyone in the country, if not much of the world, will benefit from battery chargers meeting the new CA standards.
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EPA's Energy Star program has a battery-charging standard (PDF) (http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/revisions/downloads/battery_charging_sys/prog_reqs_draft_v1.1.pdf). It's not mandatory nor does it cover all battery chargers (specifically, it excludes chargers with nameplate input powers exceeding 300W, which excludes essentially all EV chargers).
As long as California's standards don't impose an undue burden on charger manufacturers, I'm all for it. Smart chargers are wonderful things. Since chargers are typically included with most products, consumers don't typically have a way to signal a desire for more efficient or intelligent chargers .. nor an easy way to determine if a charger is rapidly damaging batteries or using excess power.
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These charger regulations were adopted last Thursday and will go into effect in 2013 for consumer products, 2014 for industrial equipment and 2015 for commercial chargers, according a local TV news report.