Energy efficiency and going “green” is all the rage these days. All industries, including those making appliances, electronic equipment, and data centers, are promoting higher energy efficiency and its resulting savings. The two aspects of saving, both saving the environment and saving on utility bills, appeal to a wide spectrum of constituents that includes manufacturers, end users of products, industry investors, and environmentalists. With the current level of social awareness, improving the energy efficiency of products can simultaneously increase sales while delivering societal benefits. In the future, all energy-consuming products are expected to embrace energy efficiency as its primary product development objective and marketing theme.

However, improving energy efficiency is not as easy as it seems because of various colliding interests and the global nature of business. Various regulatory agencies have come out with differing requirements that can conflict with one another, which creates anxiety and confusion among manufacturers and end-users. Creating regulatory standards for the public good has become an obsession of the political class. The rules are created with good intentions, but fraught with a lack of harmonization. For example, in the U.S., federal and various state efficiency standards are colliding, leaving equipment developers in a state of uncertainty while waiting for various courts to resolve any conflicts.

Home appliances are at the forefront of the energy efficiency issue and the industry played an early role in developing energy efficient products. The visibility and daily consumer interaction with appliances has helped to make consumers more aware of energy efficiency issues. An EPA EnergyStar label on a refrigerator tends to have a greater effect on social awareness than a behind-the-scenes piece of equipment the average person never sees.

Even though appliances have made a lot of progress in improving energy efficiency, various regulators, legislators, and utilities are interested in lowering their energy consumption even further through more stringent energy efficiency standards. Another topic under discussion is the notion of synchronizing energy demand and supply by creating a communications interface between appliances and the electric power grid. Depending on one’s perspective, these developments can be viewed as either a problem or an opportunity for innovative solutions.

The global movement toward better energy efficiency has many regulatory agencies working on revising existing efficiency standards or preparing new ones. These efforts are expected to increase the level of confusion as various agencies working independently of one another create a mesh of differing and often conflicting standards. Clearly, some form of standards harmonization will become necessary so as not to impede efficient product design and manufacturing practices.

In the meantime, the Power Sources Manufacturers Association is trying to alleviate some of these problems. To help provide more understanding of the various regulatory requirements that exist around the world, the PSMA has designed an online database that contains the evolving standards and regulations pertaining to energy efficiency. This online database, available through the Energy Efficiency Forum on the PSMA web site, includes the various organizations – state, national and global – that are active in establishing energy efficiency standards and regulations for power supplies used in commercial applications.

For each organization, the database includes the specific applications, the most recent status of the standard, identifies critical documents, meetings and milestones, and provides links to the appropriate web sites of the controlling organization. The information in the database is being updated on a regular basis and is believed to be the most complete and current source available in the industry. The information in the database is critical for designers of power systems for applications destined for the global marketplace and are therefore required to satisfy the present and evolving energy efficiency standards in their target markets.

The database is updated as new standards and regulations become available. This valuable information resource is currently available for a limited time to the industry through the PSMA web site. Access to the information can be obtained through the Efficiency Database tab in the Energy Efficiency Forum that is accessed from the home page of the PSMA web site (www.psma.com). In the future, the database will only be available in the Members Only portion of the PSMA web site, so non-members are urged to avail themselves of this resource while available.