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EU commits to reducing energy waste in power supplies
The European Commission last week adopted a new regulation to improve the performance of power supplies , such as those commonly used around the home for charging laptops and mobile phones.
The rules set out performance requirements for external power supply units which convert mains electricity into lower voltage DC supplies for household and office appliances. The requirements address both the “active” efficiency (i.e. how effectively the supply converts mains into DC power whilst actually being used to charge a device) and also the no load power consumption (i.e. the energy dissipated (wasted) by the supply even when it is not powering a device).
This ruling is the latest in a series of “ecodesign” measures being introduced by the EU, and follows on from last year’s adoption of regulations to reduce the standby energy consumption of all household and office products.
The announcement also seems to confirm a commitment from the EU’s press office to defining an entirely new type of unit for measuring energy – namely that of the annual electricity consumption of various European countries. Following a general trend in the media for measuring lengths in double-decker buses and areas in units of the size of Wales , recent press releases have defined:
• Denmark’s annual electricity consumption ~= the energy savings by 2020 due to the new EU regulations on standby power consumption;
• Sweden’s annual electricity consumption ~= the energy savings by 2020 due to the first wave of the EU’s ecodesign regulations;
• Lithuania’s annual electricity consumption ~= the energy savings by 2020 due to the EU’s new regulations on improving the performance of external power supplies.
So to make it easier to interpret future European press releases, it’s probably worth committing these current conversion rates to memory:
1 Denmark = 4.111 Lithuanias
1 Sweden = 3.378 Denmarks (or 13.887 Lithuanias)
Unfortunately no further explanation is given, so we can’t be entirely sure whether they relate to the countries’ current electricity consumption, or that predicted by 2020...
By Anna
