13th July 2005

New Requirements for Electrical Safety - EMF and EMC Functional Safety

EMC Technologies Castle Hills (Sydney) laboratories has recently moved to new larger premises in nearby Seven Hills. In addition to the most comprehensive EMC/EMR/SAR test and approval capabilities, the current scope of safety testing has been greatly expanded to include a wide range of products such as ITE, instruments, White goods and IP testing. The upgraded EMC and Safety laboratories are now located in a newly built 800 m² building in Seven Hills, offering expanded services and improved client comfort and facilities.

In order to legally market electrical/electronic products in Europe the CE marking must be applied, but only after establishing compliance with all applicable Directives. The EMC Directive 89/336/EEC and the Low Voltage Directive 73/23/EEC (LVD) usually apply to most products. Compliance is established by testing to the applicable harmonised safety standards listed on the European Union Official Journal (OJ). The same standards are generally adopted for use in Australia. This article will explain some major new compliance requirements applicable to many products under the scope of the LVD (CE Marking) and Australian/New Zealand electrical safety standards.

New EMF Requirements

The EU Directive 1999/519/EC provides basic restrictions to protect the general public from exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF). EU Directive 1999/5/EC known as the Radio and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment (RTT&E) Directive , mandates essential requirements for the protection of the health and safety of the user or any other person. In order to demonstrate compliance with these new requirements, the LVD and R&TTE OJ list of harmonised standards now include new standards that set limits for human exposure to Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and electromagnetic fields (EMF).

EN 50366:2003 sets limits for EMF generated by household appliances and similar devices over the frequency range 10Hz to 400 kHz. This standard applies to all mains powered equipment under the scope of the EN 60335 range of standards. The scope of EN50366 also includes “appliances not intended for normal household use , but which nevertheless may be accessible to the general public , such as appliances intended for use by laymen in shops, in light industry and on farms.” Compliance may be established by declaration of conformity (DoC) for benign products, by expert investigation and comparison with similar tested products, or by fully testing.

EN 50371:2002 sets limits for the exposure of the general public to RF EMR from low power electrical and electronic products incorporating RF transmitters of average power not exceeding 20 mW over the range 10 MHz to 300 GHz. This harmonized standard now appears on the LVD and R&TTE OJ and applies to all products under the scope of those directives. Compliance may be demonstrated by preparing an assessment report that shows that the basic restrictions for human exposure are not exceeded. This report should contain all the information needed for performing repeatable assessments, tests, calculations and measurements giving results within the required calibration and uncertainty limits.

EN 50364: 2001 sets limits for exposure of the general public to RF EMR form RFID and Electronic Article Surveillance products in the range 0 Hz to 10 GHz.

What about existing approvals?

The above EMR/EMF requirements apply to new approvals and to products entering the European market for the first time. EMC’s expert engineers can assist in the evaluation of your product and where necessary, arrange testing of representative samples that can provide evidence of conformity to maintain an existing approval after 1st February 2006.

EMC Functional Safety

The LVD now calls up EMC functional safety requirements for all products having electronic protective switches or electronic circuits that operate an off or standby switch. IEC 60335-1 A1: 2004 introduced the EMC functional safety requirements and has also been adopted on the LVD OJ list as EN 60335-1:2004. It was adopted in Australia as AS/NZS 60335-1 A1 : 2004. Compliance with the EMC functional safety requirements is achieved by applying the following EMC immunity tests.

EN 61000-4-2: Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) to levels of 8/15 kV

EN 61000-4-3:Radiated RF fields 80 MHz to 2500 MHz at 10 V/m

EN 61000-4-4: Fast transients at a level of 4 kV

EN 61000-4-5: High Voltage Surges up to 4 kV

EN 61000-4-6: Injected RF currents over the 0.15 MHz to 80 MHz

EN 61000-4-11: Voltage dips and interruptions

EN 61000-4-13: Mains signals and inter-harmonics

All products on the market after 1st October 2006 must comply. EMC Technologies can assess the requirements of your product and if EMC functional safety tests are necessary, will work with you to develop an EMC test plan. NATA accredited immunity testing in accordance with the EMC Functional Safety requirements is provided at EMC’s Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland laboratories. The Sydney laboratories also provide NATA accredited electrical safety testing to AS/NZS/IEC/EN 60335 for a wide range of products, making it the only facility in Australia accredited for Electrical Safety, EMC Functional Safety and EMC. The NATA scope also includes products covered by IEC 601010, IEC 60950-1, AS/NZS 3820, IEC 61558, AS/NZS 3100 and IP testing to IEC 60529 and their Australian equivalents.

With many years of experience in product approvals, and testing capability covering EMR, SAR, EMC, Safety plus ETSI standards, EMCT is uniquely placed to provide a “one-stop-shop” .