rdandt@rdandt.co.uk
Minimum energy standards proposed
The Energy Related Products Framework Directive (formerly known as the Energy Using Products Directive) will develop MEPS (Minimum Energy Performance Standards) for a number of refrigerated appliances. . Work to develop MEPS has been carried out under a number of tasks called ‘lots’. The latest information from Lot 1 dealing with refrigerating and freezing equipment (including commercial service cabinets, blast chiller/freezer cabinets, walk-in cold rooms, industrial process chillers and packaged condensing units) is now available.
The seven documents dealing energy saving technologies and their potential to reduce energy consumption and are divided as follows:
Task 1:Product definition
Task 2:Economic and freeing equipment
Task 3: User behaviour
Task 4:Technical analysis and assessment of base case
Task 5:Technical analysis of improvement options
Task 6:Improvement potential
Task 7:Policy and impact analysis
The document can be downloaded from http://www.ecofreezercom.org/documents_1.php and cover a large range of components and technologies and include feedback from the first stakeholder event held in June 2010. The newly published documents have a lot more information than the earlier versions and due to stakeholder involvement there seems to have been a reality check on some technologies which have now been given less prominence. The authors of Lot 1 (Bio Intelligence)publish interesting data on the range in performance of equipment that shows performance of refrigerated appliances can vary widely. This corroborates information collected by RD&T that clearly shows the huge potential to further improve performance from both current and new technologies.
Task 7 is probably the most important document as it includes suggested MEPs and the test standards to be used for assessment. These are based on the base cases outlined in task 4 and the savings identified in tasks 5 and 6. In many cases the MEPS suggested look extremely challenging or near impossible to achieve and the test standards are often not clear. A good example if this is the MEPS outlined for commercial service equipment. If the currently listed ECA cabinets are compared to the proposed MEPS this shows that no cabinets would be able to achieve the MEPS. It could be argued that cabinets tested under the current test standard used for the ECA scheme (EN441) would consume more energy than the new standard proposed for MEPS. Even so it would not seem feasible that even with a test standard that would result in lower energy use that more than 10% of the currently listed ECA scheme cabinets could comply with the proposed MEPS.
Information on when MEPS are likely to be implemented and actual thresholds is still rather sketchy. However, one thing we know is that MEPS are coming and so we need to be prepared by making sure products are at least as good as the base cases presented in Lot 1. For further advice and help on any aspects of energy optimisation or testing please contact RD&T.
