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guide to navigating
the EMC directive
Application note
Strangely for a profession that depends upon as the standards-making body for the electrical
countless voluntary standards for its survival, industry, the International Electrotechnical Com-
the electronics industry always finds legislative mission (IEC) has two main technical committees
demands tough going. Theres no hiding place that are responsible for EMCthe CISPR (French
eitherthe global nature of todays commerce for the International Special Committee on Radio
makes it impossible to ignore legislation and Interference), and technical committee TC77 thats
standards that originate in any of the key markets. responsible for the IEC 61000 series.
No legislative demand to date has caused prod- IEC standards are voluntary until a regulatory
uct designers more fear, uncertainty and doubt authority adopts them, which in 61000s case is
than the European Commissions EMC Directive CENELEC. Standards acquire legal significance
2004/108/EC (originally 89/336/EEC). when theyre published in the Official Journal of
Under this directive, standards bodies in regions the European Community and acquire EN (European
as diverse as the US, Australasia, and the Middle Normative) status. Notification of new standards
and Far East have broadly or even precisely fol- and updates continually appears on Europas
lowed the European Unions lead, whose definition websitesee Useful Links at the conclusion of this
of EMC is the ability of an equipment to function document.. Accurate but turgid, this site covers
satisfactorily in its electromagnetic environment everything from the shape of fruit and vegetables
without introducing intolerable electromagnetic to the campaign against smoking, leaving most
disturbances to anything in that environment. engineers to rely on trade magazines such as Test
Lets review the impact of the standards that the & Measurement World and specialist sources such
directive embraces for engineers working in the as Compliance Journal, Evaluation Engineering, and
ac powerline, energy metering, and power-quality Metering International.
areaswhere recent changes to the key harmonic The EMC Directive includes CISPR and IEC 61000
pollution and voltage fluctuation measurements standards along with generic emissions and immu-
are crucially important. Please remember that this nity standards that act as a catch-all for products
review is just thatits no substitute for official where no specific standards apply. Among a seem-
standards documents or the expert interpretation ingly endless string of numbers, generic standards
that test houses apply on their clients behalf! include EN 50081, EN 55011, EN 55014, and EN
55022 for emissions and EN 50082 for immu-
What is the EMC Directive? nity. Its a manufacturers responsibility to ensure
To help promote free trade throughout the Euro- that any equipment sold or put into use within
pean Union, in 1985 the European Commission the European Union meets appropriate standards,
launched a program to harmonize national and without which assurance products cannot carry the
international technical standardsthe aim being CE markthe Conformit Europenne health and
to create uniform trading conditions for all member safety product labelor legally be sold within this
states. Recognizing the importance of electro- region. Other legislation that may apply includes
magnetic compatibility for the ever-growing the Low Voltage Directive and the Automotive EMC
electrical and electronic equipment market, the Directive that define which standards apply to par-
Commission instructed CENELEC (the European ticular product groups, as well as product-specific
Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization) to standards such as those for energy meters. Before
come up with standards to combat powerline and considering individual specifications, its essential
radio frequency interferenceusing where pos- to understand power quality and some key concepts
sible existing IEC standards. Established in 1906 that apply throughout this area.
F r o m t h e F l u k e C a l i b r a t i o n D i g i t a l L i b r a r y @ w w w. f l u k e c a l . c o m / l i b r a r y
Power quality and EN 50160
The concept of power quality ranges from a con-
sumers view of power delivery thats free from
power outages to freedom from interference that
may compromise, for example, broadcast reception.
The standard that the European electricity supply
industry uses to assess the quality of power
delivery is EN 50160. This sets the voltage charac-
teristics of the 230 V low-voltage supply level at
10 % of nominal voltage and 50 Hz 1 % for
95 % of the week. It also sets various limits for
transient overvoltages, as well as voltage imbal- Figure 1. The
ances in three-phase systems as Table 1 shows. European Reference
While most countries have regulatory authori- Impedance according
ties that follow IEC specifications and guidelines to IEC 60725.
for their electricity supplies, the US differs in
having no federal regulatory body thats exclu-
sively responsible for the nations electricity Reactive power compromises
supplyutilities are subject to the legislation thats supply-network stability
effective within their state of residence, and pub- From an electricity providers viewpoint, its criti-
lish their own quality-of-service statements that cally important to ensure that the supply network
invariably include best effort clauses. The spate is always stable. Because capacitive and inductive
of blackouts across the US over the past few years loads cause reactive power flow that can com-
has forced some major rethinking in that countrys promise network stability, the electricity provider
operating requirements, with the North American has to ensure that theres always enough power
Electric Reliability Council recently publishing available to maintain stability under worst-case
a series of operating standards that it strongly conditions, compromising efficient generation.
encourages utilities to adopt. Moreover, it has been Taken to extremes, a network that is supplying a
in discussions with the Federal Energy Regulatory poor power factor environment can trip out, creat-
Commission in an attempt to secure the nations ing local blackouts that can cascade throughout
bulk electricity supply, with many observers con- the network.
sidering federal regulation to be inevitable. To understand these issues, remember that
the ac powerline has finite impedance that
varies from socket to socket. Figure 1 shows the
European reference impedance according to IEC
60725 thats set with the objective of 95 % of
the networks impedance being at or below these
values. Dedicated power sources are available
with programmable output impedance to simulate
this and other models, which vary slightly across
the world. In this instance, programming 400 m
and 800 H approximates IEC 60725.
The interactions between the load and this
impedance depend on the magnitude of the
impedance and the loads current consumption
profile. Resistive loads draw current in phase with
the voltage waveform, and the resulting power
waveform is a positive-going sinusoid at twice
line frequency.
In contrast, a purely inductive load draws cur-
rent 90 out-of-phase with the voltage waveform,
and the power waveform is a sinewave of twice
line frequency that centers on zero. That is, the
inductor alternately absorbs and returns power to
the line. Neglecting shunt capacitances, electric
motors comprise a resistance in series with an
inductance, so some percentage of the supply-
line energy dissipates in the resistor thats doing
Table 1. EN 50160 sets limits for European electrical power
availability.
Figure 2. Diode-capacitor front-ends charge the input capacitor close to the peak of the sinewave (a), creating current
harmonics that extend way beyond 1 kHz (b).
demands on the sources that are used to calibrate which the instrument must maintain its accuracy
class-A instruments, which then require overall within the specifications permissible uncer-
uncertainties of 0.02 % across a range of arti- tainties. For example, voltage readings must
facts to ensure reliable results. Table 5 shows the correctly report the sum of the fundamental and
influence quantities and their ranges for class-A any harmonics, while harmonics mustnt disturb
performance. voltage imbalance measurements. These checks
For each measurement parameter, the test pro- demand test sources that can freely combine refer-
cedure first selects the parameter of interestsay ence test signals such as rms voltage, flicker, and
voltagethen makes further measurements at five harmonics:
equally-spaced points throughout the range of Class B instruments must pass similar but less
this parameter while holding all other parameters exacting multiple-artifact tests. Also, the manu-
constant within testing state 1see Table 6. This facturer must state the respective measurement
check is therefore a linearity test, with voltage intervals and explain how the instrument acquires
being checked at 0 %, 50 %, 100 %, 150 %, and and reports its measurement data. The maximum
200 % of nominal full range. The procedure then voltage measurement uncertainty is 0.5 %,
advances to testing states 2 and 3, when the and again the manufacturer must state the uncer-
primary parameter of interest is subject to succes- tainty and measurement method for frequency
sive combinations of influence quantitiesduring readings.