Notes from the Secretariat

Welcome to the Summer 2020 EPSMA newsletter. The effects of the corona virus on our industry are widespread with many colleagues forced to work from home and some businesses even closing but hopefully only temporarily. The EPSMA Q2 2020 management committee meeting was held as a conference call as the PCIM show was cancelled and member travel is anyway restricted. It was well attended though, with 17 MC members and guests calling in.

Q2 2020 MC meeting

The Q2/20 management committee meeting on Tuesday 5th May was a webex conference call kindly hosted by Vicor. Minutes and meeting slides in the members’ area of the website.

As usual, Paul Lee, for the secretariat, gave members an update on membership numbers, website developments, Brexit implications and EPSMA finance.

The organisation Energyville, a collaboration of Belgian research institutes and universities has requested affiliate membership of the EPSMA. This was unanimously approved and Energville is welcomed to the EPSMA family.

Paul Lee noted that there is ongoing maintenance to the website which might show as some temporary broken links. This is being addressed.

The EPSMA has been made aware that trade associations are lobbying the European Commission to delay the date of withdrawal (DOW) of EN 60950-1 and EN 60065 (20th Dec 2020). The meeting discussed whether the EPSMA should make the same representations but after the meeting, information was received that the relevant technical committee CLC TC108X has already decided that no further delay will be considered.

Gregor Schoss of SiQ has kindly reviewed the energy efficiency databases available in the members’ area of the website. These are useful and largely up to date so the EPSMA will continue to maintain them as far as possible.

A link to a useful document by Intertek on the regulatory environment after Brexit has been circulated to members.

Paul Conway reported on the work of the Technical Committee detailed below.

Thierry Pelikan of TDK Lambda, a long-time contributor to EPSMA activities, has announced his retirement - the EPSMA wishes him well for the future.

The next MC meeting will be a conference call on the 8th September with details to be circulated nearer to the date.

Technical Committee report

The TC met by conference call on the 4th May and Paul Conway, TC chairman gave a summary of TC activities and progress with the recently agreed TC projects:

1. Guidelines to life time prediction for power supplies:

A final draft of this document will be available to the MC for review shortly.

2. Embedded software verification and validation in power supplies:

A draft of this document should be available for review by the end of May. Note the document title has changed to include ‘verification’.

Ideas for new projects are now being sought and will be reviewed at the next MC meeting in September. Members are encouraged to suggest topics for EPSMA reports that will benefit members and their customers.

Minutes of the TC meeting are in the members’ area of the website.

The next TC meeting would normally be at Electronica in Munich in November. This will be kept under review due to travel restrictions and may be a conference call.

Linkedin

We have a ’Linkedin’ forum for members to use and a data base of UL non-conformances for members to log their observations. Contact the secretariat for more details.

CE Marking Issues forum

Remember we have a forum for issues members have with “CE” marking. If you would like to share problems (and resolutions!) With other members, please contact the secretariat with details.