THE REGULATORY HORIZON AND HARMONIZATION OF BATTERY STANDARDS

Ann Nguyen:
Hi. This is Ann Nguyen, Senior Associate Conference Producer with Cambridge EnerTech, and this is a podcast interview for the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit, returning to Fort Lauderdale, Florida this March 21st to 24th. Today I have the pleasure of chatting with the President and CEO of Energy Assurance LLC, Cindy Millsaps, one of our speakers during Symposium 1: Battery Safety.

Hello, Cindy. Thanks so much for carving out some time for us.

Cindy Millsaps:
No problem.

Ann Nguyen:
Can you describe your path toward working in regulations product safety and testing in the battery and power energy space? What are your primary activities at Energy Assurance now?

Cindy Millsaps:
Right out of school I started working at Underwriters Laboratories (UL) in the information technology equipment organization there. Then moved into standards development which was my first look at where the standards came from. After working there for a while I left and went to Motorola Energy Systems Group and was responsible for power supply charger and battery regulatory compliance for their entire product line.

We then went and developed an internal testing services business that sold to external customers as well as internal customers so I was a charter member of that organization which was Motorola Product Testing Services or MPTS. Then after a few years Motorola decided to exit that business, so basically my business partner and I came and started Energy Assurance to help to take on some of that business that was left by Motorola Product Testing Services.

As president and CEO it sounds a lot more glamorous than what it is. Mostly responsible for customer relations, new business development including standards development globally, so understanding where the next standards are going to be and what's going to be in the revisions to the standards that are existing. I also work with the quality group within our organization.

Ann Nguyen:
How have standards for cell and battery manufacturers evolved over the last decade and how have battery stakeholders had to address them?

Cindy Millsaps:
Ten years ago, lithium-ion batteries were very young and they were much lower power than what we're seeing now and typically used in smaller applications. The standards community was fairly small at that point and not very well recognized with the battery standards. IEC 62133, the international standards first edition was out about ten years ago -- I believe it was 2002 that it was released -- but it didn't have any existing following. There was no push for people to follow it.

Most of the time at that point the end product standard was used to evaluate the battery. If something came in and it had a battery, then the end product standard tried to develop some test methods and ways of testing it instead of looking to an individual standard for that component. The end product standards themselves outside of UL -- UL did have UL 1642 and UL 2054 -- have been around for a very long time. They sort of evolved over time as the battery industry had evolved. Then there was a decision made by the IECEE to require all of the end product standards to start using IEC 62133 and there was a new revision of 62133 that came out.

That kind of moved everyone over a course of several years toward the use of the IEC standard for international compliance. The unfortunate part was there's still two sets of standards out there that are not well harmonized. We had the UL standards, the UL 1642 and the UL 2054 which remain very strong and are always going to be required for compliance of the end product using the battery with UL standards. Now UL has recently released a harmonized standard, UL 62133, but it's currently not widely recognized or used yet because it's just not well developed at this point.

Then during all of that time you had the UN regulations come out or the IATA regulations and then the DOT regulations referencing the revised UN manual testing criteria and this transportation regulations have been ever changing over the past ten years and they continue to change rapidly, and the UN manual threw in a whole new set of tests out there for everybody. As a result the battery stakeholders have been on kind of a roller coaster of changing regulations, interpretations, new global certifications and regulatory schemes that they've had to try and design their batteries to fit into, so it's been quite a challenge.

Ann Nguyen:
Can you foresee what's on the regulatory horizon?

Cindy Millsaps:
What I would hope to see is a move toward harmonization of the battery standards like we see in other product categories, where there is an overriding IEC standard and it's harmonized globally. You can get a CB Scheme report for the product and take that to all of the international destinations for that product and obtain the certifications for those areas.

Unfortunately what I am seeing in the participation that I have with the standards development community is sort of a weakening of the IEC standard through some of the revisions that are coming out. The next revision of IEC 62133 is due out in the next year to year and a half and it's moving toward removing a lot of the “shall” or “must do” kind of statements from the standard and making those “shoulds” or “nice to do” statements.

That sort of leads to a lot of national deviations because a lot of the countries see those “nice to do” statements as things that they really want products coming into their country and being sold in their country to be compliant with. Then you see other countries implementing their own separate standards or national deviations associated with the international standards or you end up back where we started with the batteries which is the end product standards start to add additional requirements for batteries used in their products. Rather than seeing a converging of standards and requirements globally, right now it looks like it's continuing to diverge which is unfortunate.

Ann Nguyen:
What would you like to convey to the audience during your March 24th presentation, “All Tests and Standards Are Not Created Equal – Even if They Have the Same Name!”?

Cindy Millsaps:
I'd like to make it clear to everyone that even though there is a limited number of standards for batteries right now and within those standards, the UN standard, the IEC standard, the UL standard, there's a lot of tests that have very similar names. They sound like they would be the same. Unfortunately the overlap or the real similarities are very minimal and we're still very far from a harmonized set of standards for batteries.

Ann Nguyen:
That was Cindy Millsaps of Energy Assurance. She'll be speaking during Symposium 1 on Battery Safety at the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit this March 21st to 24th in Fort Lauderdale. To learn more from her, visit www.internationalbatteryseminar.com for registration info and enter the keycode “Podcast”. This is Ann Nguyen. Thanks for listening.