California Must Give Up Pursuit of Battery Charger Standards, Says AHAM

Alleging “lack of transparency and openness” in the Ecos Consulting study that was the basis for the California Energy Commission’s proposed efficiency standards for battery chargers, appliance manufacturers urged the agency to abandon its pursuit of regulations because the Department of Energy is poised to adopt national standards for the devices. Under federal law, the DOE is required to complete its rulemaking on battery chargers by July and it’s “well in line with that timeline,” said the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM). CEA also has urged the CEC to give up its quest for state standards for battery chargers, saying it’s “unnecessary and wasteful” in light of the DOE’s rulemaking.

The Ecos study sets 2012 as the “compliance year” for the California standards, so manufacturers will have “two years to source components and adjust designs,” AHAM said. But since the CEC hasn’t started a rulemaking on battery charger efficiency standards, the state should not “pursue a standard that would not go into effect until about the same time as the DOE standard, which will cover the very same products,” Jennifer Cleary, AHAM director of regulatory affairs, wrote the commission.

The CEC should only pursue a rulemaking for battery chargers for products that aren’t covered by the DOE’s proposed standards, AHAM said. The commission hasn’t produced information that shows there would be “additional or any benefits” by the state adopting its own standards “so close in time to final DOE standards,” it said. “Dedicating limited monetary and other resources, especially as we struggle to improve the economy, to a regulation that will soon be superseded by DOE is not a prudent use of CEC’s resources,” Cleary said.

Responding to the commission’s Jan. 31 request for more data from industry to help with its proposed battery charger standards, Cleary said AHAM got “no response” to questions raised last October on the Ecos study. “It is untenable that CEC expects industry to now provide data to respond” to the Ecos study “when industry does not understand the data that underline that study,” she said. The CEC should extend to March 31 the deadline for data submission and provide answers to questions raised by AHAM to “ensure an accurate data submission,” Cleary said. The commission could also draw from the data available in the DOE’s rulemaking which is “superior” to the Ecos study because “the data are more current and much of it comes from stakeholders, such as AHAM members,” she said.