Fan ecodesign regulation and standards from an industry perspective

The request for a revision, or new fan efficiency standard, in the European Commission annual Union work programme for European standardisation for 2022 is specific in its requirements for ‘an extended products approach, notably by defining a sufficient number of operating points and an interpolation/calculation method and/or a characteristic curve’.
The source of the request for ‘a sufficient number of operating points and an interpolation/ calculation method’ can be found in criticism from several stakeholders, including the consultant acting on behalf of the commission.
This is explained in detail in the Problem Statement published by the European Ventilation Industry Association (EVIA). The consultant stated at the consultation forum on the review of regulation 327/2011 ‘there have been no major developments in the metric underlying that Regulation. The ‘extended product approach’ for part load testing, which is part of several other Eco-design-regulated products, has hardly been explored by the sector’. The term Extended Product Approach is often confused with system efficiency and incorrectly linked to an Energy Efficiency Index (EEI), see the EVIA Problem Statement.
Other stakeholders refer to the term Extended Product Approach (EPA) defined in IEC 61800-9-1 and conclude that an EEI must be used in fan standards to define the efficiency of the fan system operating at part load. The European fan industry does not consider an EEI as an appropriate metric as it does not provide sufficient data for users to make informed decisions. An alternative approach, such as that used in European regulation of motor and drives, is proposed by EVIA in their Proposal for a standardisation request (sReq). This presentation describes how additional product information can describe the partial load characteristic and provide users with reliable data to make better informed decisions.