CISPR meetings

By J. M. Woodgate B.Sc.(Eng.) C.Eng.  MIET MIEEE FAES

CISPR meetings

CISPR and almost all of its adjuncts will meet for two weeks in Frankfurt in October. The  first draft CISPR agenda includes:

• Wireless power transfer (in the context of charging – batteries, not people);
• a call for a decision on the subject of the 80/80 rule, based on a Document for Comment that has not yet been circulated;
• the 9 kHz to 150 kHz frequency range (of course), but with a new twist – a protection requirement for 8.3 kHz to 9 kHz, base on another document that is promised.

Of course, all the usual items of liaisons, reports and general 'housekeeping' are also included. It is notable that the only decision required by this draft is about the 80/80 rule. But there may be many updates of the agenda before October. The CISPR sub-committee agendas have not yet appeared, but will probably feature in the next issue of KYS.

Generic standard

IEC 61000-6-5 Immunity for equipment used in power station and substation environments has reached the CDV (first vote) stage. At least six product committees have produced product standards with EMC clauses for equipment used in these environments (power stations and sub-stations are different EMC environments), and there is a need for co-ordination to be provided by this Generic standard. The complementary Generic emission standard is IEC 61000-6-4.

The Scope clause is a three-volume novel, contrary to the IEC Central Office editors' pressure for concise Scope clauses, so the present text may not survive to publication. Astonishingly, the 'boilerplate' text for the Normative References clause is a version that was superseded at least five years ago. It seems that there might be quite a number of comments from National Committees on non-technical issues that do not warrant a negative vote.

Globespace 2014

This event is a symposium on EMC, safety and product compliance engineering, taking place in Tel Aviv, Israel in December 2014. It is supported by IEEE, IET, URSI and other organizations. Details at www.globespace.org

Three to tango?

Following the still largely unresolved issue that smart metering and active in-feed converters both want to make use of the spectrum between 80 kHz and 140 kHz, now CISPR/B is considering the same frequency range for wireless power transfer. Tango? More likely an undignified collapse in a heap, especially as the regulatory authorities seem to have this subject in the 'too difficult' file and are not planning to divide the 9 kHz to 150 kHz band between different services.

CENELEC initiative on 9 kHz to 150 kHz

A workshop on this subject was held in May in Switzerland. Unfortunately (but hardly unexpectedly), it could not reach any useful conclusions.

Changes to CISPR standards

CISPR/S: This is the Steering Committee; it doesn't produce standards but is similar to a Chairman's Advisory Group. It has set up a Working Group to look at consistency of terminology in CISPR standards, following the initiative of CISPR/A (which has a particularly sensitive issue in aligning terminology throughout the huge CISPR 16). There is a particular problem with traditional terms. For example 'input voltage' and 'source e.m.f.' are both voltages, but not the same voltage, and 'source voltage' is not widely used in place of the more traditional term. The outcome of the work will, of course, be editorial changes to several standards.

CISPR/A: A new amendment to CISPR 16-1-4 has been issued as a CD (Committee Draft). It concerns antennas and test sites. Another CD is for Amendment 1 to CISPR 16-1-3, on measurement of disturbance power. Rather oddly, this has been issued by BSI as a Draft for Public Comment. Since the comment period is only three months, any public response would need to be submitted very swiftly. A third document from CISPR/A is the voting result for Amendment 2 to CISPR 16-1-1 on requirements when using a preamplifier. It was approved with no negative votes and no comments.

CISPR/D: A CD has been issued for a new edition of CISPR 25 Vehicles, boats and internal combustion engines – Radio disturbance characteristics – Limits and methods of measurement for the protection of on=board receivers Again, the Scope is very long and the introductory text to Normative references is out of date. Some of the definitions are written incorrectly and at least one contains a requirement, which is not permitted. One would hope that all standards writers were encouraged to look to IEC Directives Part 2 (a free download from the public part of the IEC web site) and follow its rules. That saves so many unnecessary comments by National Committees.

CISPR/F:

A CD has appeared for the revision of CISPR14-1, to form Edition 6.0. It is a merger of previous fragments f1 and f2, and includes the full editorial revision. It is a pity, therefore that it refers to 'luminaries' in line 14! It is very difficult for the original writer to pick up such typos unless a specific search is made for the suspect word. Printing the document and reading the hard copy can help, but it seems a retrograde solution. Another way to check is to ask one or more other people to read the draft before it is circulated, but some people simply don't see mistakes, while others even see missing or superfluous commas, which don't matter unless the sense is damaged. Punctuation is always fixed by the Central Office editors before a document is published.

For complying with the latest rules in IEC Directives Part 2, it can be helpful to search for words that may be used incorrectly, 'shall' (restricted to normative text), 'should' and 'may' (not used in notes to text, but are permitted in notes to tables and figures), and 'Note' (not to be used for definitions, where 'Note [n] to entry' is required, n being a serial number, required even if there is only one such note). Two-finger typists can also check for 'eth', teh' (unless it really is the Cyrillic letter), and 'form' instead of 'from'.

CISPR/I: CISPR 13 lives still! Amendment 1 to the 5th Edition has passed its first-stage vote (CDV) with few comments. CISPR 35 is being revived as 'new work' under IEC rules. It is planned to try to get agreement on less controversial issues first, which will probably work, but how long it will take to resolve the other issues for an early amendment is still quite uncertain. CENELEC has decided not to 'go it alone' with a Europe-only version.

Just after I sent this to the Kindly Editor, BSI sent out a stream of new documents, including five first-stage voting (CDV) reports on fragments for CISPR 32 Edition 2. Only four have passed; fragment 3 on measurement uncertainty attracted one too many negative votes. However, it is notable that more than one National Committee submitted technical comments on some other fragments with a positive vote. Such comments might not be taken into account. The overall number of comments is quite large, so CISPR/I will have much more work to do, on this standard and CISPR 35..

Safety

Although this esteemed publication is almost all about EMC, 'compliance' in Europe includes safety. So it is worth noting that the 8th Edition of IEC 60065 (consumer electronics and similar) has been published. Also, IEC 62353 ed2.0 Medical electrical equipment – Recurrent test and test after repair of medical electrical equipment  is 'pre-released'. This means that you buy the FDIS (second stage voting ) document before it is voted and when the standard is finally published, you automatically get the published version.

Energy efficiency

This is a relatively new delight offered by the magnanimous regulatory authorities to the rich pageant of compliance. CENELEC is very active in the field, encouraged by European Commission mandates. A general issue in producing standards to demonstrate conformity is devising realistic test conditions that are also practicable for test houses. For example, testing large air conditioners requires a high-volume water supply which many test houses do not have.

For multimedia products, including computers and consumer electronic products, a new requirement has appeared. Regulation 801/2013 was published in the Official Journal in 2013. It amends Regulation 1275/2008, on ecodesign requirements for standby, off mode electric power consumption of electrical and electronic household and office equipment. The new regulation adds 'networked standby' requirements for networked equipment and sets dates for entry into force. The applicable limits and dates are:

'HiNA' means 'High Network Availability'. Since routers should be connected to broadband WANs 24/7 (to prevent an apparent fault condition), even a home computer might be regarded as HiNA.

Consideration of the necessary standards is at present complicated by differing views in CENELEC and ETSI on which body should lead on this work.

TC100X has been recommended as follows:

• EN 62623:2013 is a good base to assess the energy efficiency of desktop and notebook computers;
• In addition, the Regulation requires the provision of technical information, not related to energy efficiency, which can only be collected by applying other standards. Referring to those standards in an amendment or in “common modifications” to EN 62623 would make the resulting document very confusing and difficult to use;
• Leave the already published EN 62623 as is, so the EN will stay in sync with the corresponding IEC standard;
• Develop a CENELEC product standard (EN 50XXX), with exactly the same scope as the Regulation, matching as closely as possible the structure of its Annex II, and making for each requirement a normative reference to EN 62623 for energy aspects and to relevant standards for other aspects;
• Propose the home-grown standard as candidate Harmonised Standard for giving presumption of conformity to the Regulation.

Freebies

It's worthwhile spending some time looking at the IEC web site to see what is available in the public domain, either to read or screen-grab or to download and file. There is a very large amount of such information available, but few exploit it. It is true that navigating the site is not easy, but there are many worse sites.