Navid Riazmontazer, a Senior Electrical Project Engineer at Inventus Power, wrote an article for ECN in March 2019 on the history of power supply efficiency requirements and their impact as well as possible upcoming requirement updates and changes in the next version of the DOE standard which is due as early as two years.
The use of external power supplies (EPS) has been growing significantly over the past three decades. California was the first to have its government organization put minimum legal requirements on the energy efficiency of the EPSs, which historically had poor efficiency. The U.S. Federal Government and other international governments followed California’s decision by initially introducing voluntary requirements, which turned into mandatory requirements a few years later.
These government entities have been gradually raising the bar since nearly 15 years ago, and the latest energy efficiency standards are not the last. We will briefly overview the history of power supply efficiency requirements and their impacts. We will outline the major aspects of the latest Department of Energy (DOE) efficiency standard, which is DOE level VI, and compare it with the latest European efficiency standards COC Tier-1 and Tier-2. We conclude with possible upcoming requirement updates and changes in the next version of the DOE standard, which is due as early as 2 years.
