Power Integrations recently announced that its high-voltage integrated circuits enable manufacturers to comply with energy-efficiency standards issued recently by the China Certification Center for Energy Conservation Products (CECP). The new standards address the energy consumption of external power supplies—the chargers and adapters that power cell phones, portable music players, digital cameras, cordless phones, portable games and other devices.
The CECP standards are harmonized with standards implemented in recent months by the California Energy Commission (CEC), Energy Star and the European Union (EU). Like Energy Star, the CECP conducts a voluntary program offering manufacturers incentives to produce environmentally friendly products. The standards include minimum operating-efficiency requirements at various levels of output power, and impose a maximum level of “no-load” power consumption. The standards effectively rule out the use of linear transformers, the highly inefficient copper and iron power supplies commonly sold as external adapters with many electronic devices.
“The effort to rid the world of the wasteful power supplies known as ‘energy vampires’ has gained considerable momentum in recent months,” noted Balu Balakrishnan, president and CEO of Power Integrations. “Policy makers in many of the world’s largest markets, including China, have coalesced around a common set of efficiency standards that essentially rule out the use of linear transformers in external power supplies. Power Integrations’ LinkSwitch ICs are specifically tailored for the replacement of low-power linear transformers,” continued Balakrishnan.
Copy-ready reference designs for energy-efficient external power supplies, as well as complete information on global energy-efficiency standards, can be found in the Power Integrations Green Room at www.powerint.com/greenroom.
