Battery & Fuel Cell Technology
labelling requirements is replicated around the globe. Russia requires its Gost-R certificate, Australia and New Zealand implement the C-Tick scheme, China has a CQC certificate and the European Union requires a CE mark. Even within the EU, Germany and Denmark maintain separate (voluntary) safety certificates based on IEC62133, Germany’s being the GS mark and Denmark’s the D mark. The risk for electronics device OEMs is not so much that they will incur time delays and costs in certifying a battery pack – in fact, some delay and some cost is inevitable. The real risk is that both the delay and the cost can be unpredictable if the certification process is not properly managed. This unpredictability can mean that product development budgets can be exceeded, and deadlines for going to market missed.
So how should the certification
process be managed in such a way that the time and cost involved in certification is reasonable and predictable?
Three essential steps 1. The most essential of the three essential steps: plan for certification of the battery pack from the outset of the end product design project. The objective should be to submit the battery for testing by certification agency or agencies in full confidence that it will pass. Failure in an agency test is damaging in various ways. It entails costly re-design and re-work of the battery pack; re-submission of the pack to the testing agency; payment of additional agency testing fees; and worst of all, the time spent in re-designing and re-testing the battery delays the point at which the end product can be released to the market.
The best way to ensure a successful- first-time test is to understand the test requirements before the battery begins to be designed, and to build compliance with these requirements into the choice of the cells and the design of the battery pack’s housing, terminals and protection and control circuitry.
2. The second essential step is to make a fully informed choice of the certificates which the battery pack requires. The OEM must take into account factors such as: the countries in which the end product is to be marketed; the application or applications in which it is to be used; the position of the battery in the end product. Is it fully enclosed inside the end product, or is it a discrete, detachable component part? How is the end product going to be shipped, could the battery be shipped separately (for instance, as an after-market replacement part), and if so, how? What is the energy density of the cells to be used in the battery pack?
The OEM must then apply accurate and up-to-date knowledge of the safety regulations governing rechargeable batteries in each country in which the end product will be marketed. For instance, the certificate required for rechargeable battery packs in Japan is, as described above, the PSE mark. But PSE certification is only required for batteries using lithium-ion cells with an energy density greater than 400Wh/l. And PSE does not apply to batteries in cars and
www.cieonline.co.uk
Harmonising standards globally This article has provided a stark warning to electronics device OEMs that battery certification is complicated by a raft of slightly varying rules applied in different parts of the world. To finish on a more positive note,
however, there is now a way of markedly reducing the cost of gaining certificates for a battery pack in multiple countries: the Certification Bodies (CB) scheme. The CB Scheme, established by the International Electrotechnical Committee for Conformity Testing to Standards for Electrical Equipment (IECEE), provides for the mutual acceptance of test reports among participating safety certification organisations. Certification organisations in more than 40 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa participate in the scheme. Each country has one or more organisations accepted by the IECEE as a National Certification Body (NCB). Under the scheme, any one NCB will certify the end product to all harmonised standards, taking into account any national differences required for the countries in which the end product might be marketed. The NCB will issue a CB Test Certificate and a CB Test Report. This can then be used to obtain a national certificate in any other participating country. In other words, by using the CB scheme, an OEM only has to submit its battery pack to one testing agency, no matter how many countries/regions the end product is to be marketed to.
This makes the certification process
quicker, and markedly cheaper – in VARTA Microbattery’s experience, the use of the CB scheme can save as much as 20% from the cost of a multi-region battery certification programme. Electronics OEMs which are intending to market a product with an embedded rechargeable battery in multiple countries should strongly consider, at the start of the end product design, using the CB scheme. Implementing the scheme, as well as every other aspect of battery certification, will also be very considerably eased by using the services of a third party which has expertise in the technology and regulation of lithium and NiMH battery packs.
VARTA Microbattery |
www.varta-
microbattery.com
Summer Lim is Senior Technical Support Officer at VARTA Microbattery
Components in Electronics April 2013 31
motorcycles, nor to batteries in medical and industrial appliances.
3. The third step in successful management of the certification process follows from the two above: ensure that the battery certification process is guided and managed by battery experts with deep current knowledge of the regulations governing safety certification. In large, global OEMs, a central technical resource might act as a repository of standards compliance knowledge. Equally, a third party can provide knowledge to guide end product manufacturers through the battery certification process. The advantage a battery manufacturer such as VARTA Microbattery has it that it deals with battery certification regulations and testing agencies constantly, and maintains permanently up to date and accurate understanding of the rules in every part of the world.
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