29 August 2018
The Ecodesign of Energy related Products Directive (ErP) is a European wide framework put in place to help the EU achieve its 2020 target to lower carbon emissions, increase energy efficiency, and increase the share of renewable energies, each by a margin of 20 per cent.
While manufacturers have to ensure that their products comply with the directive, the end user who is purchasing the equipment is also affected.
They will need to ensure that they are carrying out due diligence to ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements to keep running costs as low as possible.
Use the five checks below to help you make sure that you’re purchasing an ErP compliant chiller:
1. Don’t just rely on CE marking
CE marking is a certification mark that indicates conformity with health, safety and environmental protection standards for products sold within the European Economic Area. Although it does encompass ErP compliance, further documentation should be legally made available to you to show this – see next point.
2. Request the mandatory technical data
It is a legal requirement for chiller manufacturers to provide you with supporting technical information to show their compliance. This includes availability of published energy performance data in their instruction manuals and free access websites.
3. Ensure the new metrics are quoted
The Ecodesign directive has brought in two new standardised performance metrics; Seasonal Space Cooling Energy Efficiency (SSCEE) for comfort cooling applications; and Seasonal Energy Performance Ratio (SEPR) for process cooling. Through the use of these standardised metrics, users are able to make better and more informed decisions when comparing products from different manufacturers.
4. Check the correct compliance metrics are applicable
As discussed above, different compliance metrics have to be met depending on the chiller’s particular application. You can determine the metric details that must be attained in order to be Ecodesign compliant using the flowchart available at https://tinyurl.com/ycw6dyor. This will help to guide you to the applicable process and shows, for example, that when an application has dual purpose the comfort metric, SSCEE, takes priority.
5. Incorporate ERP metrics into your specs
For clarity, it is always wise to consider incorporating Ecodesign metrics into your specifications. By clarifying the purpose and operating temperature of your units and corresponding metrics you can be confident that the relevant checks will be carried out and quality will be ensured.
The above article was first published at www.airedale.com in July 2018. Reproduced with kind permission.