On your marks…
Techno Talk
Mark Nelson
Confused by the markings on some of the electronic gadgets and other stuff that you own? You
won’t be for long! More confusion: we’ve also got news of free energy that definitely isn’t free – and
sounds altogether rather far-fetched.
I
n last month’s Net Work column
Alan Winstanley did a great job of
unravelling the connection between
the well-known CE product mark and
the new, less familiar UKCA symbol,
also explaining the overlap period and
the more complex situation that applies
in Northern Ireland. It all made sense,
but it also brought to mind the zany TV
sitcom series from the late seventies and
early eighties called ‘Soap’. Episodes
began with a garbled summary of the
previous episode’s storyline that ended
with the words, ‘Confused? You won’t
be after this episode of Soap’. Usually,
viewers were left even more confused.
If CE and UKCA were all you had to
contend with, life might be straightforward enough, but what about those
other letters and hieroglyphs on electronic products that mean precious little
to most people? You’re bound to have
seen them, probably without a clue as
to their meaning. What are they trying
to tell us? Do they even concern us?
Now you can finally find out…
Global marketing, global marking
Nowadays, many products are sold all
over the world, meaning that they need
to demonstrate compliance and conformity in all of the markets they are sold
in, either officially or else as ‘grey imports’. Each of the symbols seen in the
collage here (curated by the US company CUI) relates either to one of the
national or regional safety and standards
agencies around the world, or else to
one of the test laboratories. Some of the
latter have labs in more than one country and/or test products to the standards
of more than one country or region. It’s
also worth mentioning that the 21 bodies
mentioned in this article do not form an
exhaustive list; other labs, bodies and
conformance schemes exist.
Whether all this concerns us greatly is
debatable, I imagine. Nevertheless, for
possibly the first time in your life, you
can now discover the approvals body
or testing house indicated by each of
these markings. And score points for
each symbol you identify correctly!
(sorry, no prizes!)
10
Top row
From left to right we have: Underwriters
Laboratories (USA); the reversed UR symbol means UL Recognised; the Canadian
Standards Association mark for products acceptable in either Canada and/or
the USA; Normas Oficiales Mexicanas
(Mexico); Inmetro (Brazil); the S mark
of IRAM (Argentina); and our old friend
CE (Europe).
Centre row
European Norm (Europe); TüV
Rheinland (Germany); Nemko (Norway);
Eurasian Conformity (Russia); Geprüfte
Sicherheit/safety-tested; DIN (Deutsches
Institüt für Normung) / German Institute
for Standardisation; and Verband
der Elektrotechnik Elektronik und
Informationstechnik/Association for
Electrical, Electronic and Information
Technologies (Germany).
Bottom row
British Standards Institution kite mark
(UK); DENAN PSE (Japan), KC (Korea);
BSMI (Taiwan); CCC (China); PSB
(Singapore); and the RCM Tick Mark
(Australia).
Free energy, but at a price
As the clock counts down to 2050, when
the UK is committed to be nett-neutral
in terms of carbon-dioxide emissions,
researchers are becoming ever more
imaginative in their schemes for meeting this target. It is claimed, for instance,
that it might be possible to transform the
world’s largest desert, the Sahara, into
a giant solar farm, capable of meeting
four times the world’s current energy
demand. Blueprints have been drawn up
for projects in Tunisia and Morocco that
would supply electricity for millions of
households in Europe (let’s hope they
can compensate for the voltage drop
in the cables). Whether or not Europe
will allow itself to become dependent
on electricity sources outside its political (military) control remains to be
seen. (Many already doubt the wisdom
of putting so many of their natural gas
eggs in one Russian basket.)
A superior scheme for capturing the
sun’s energy would be to launch vast
solar panels into space, convert sunlight
into microwave energy and transmit
this back to earth. In theory, this Space
Solar Power (SSP) sounds like a very
elegant solution, especially as the lifetime cost of microwave energy beamed
from geostationary satellites could be
half that of ground-based nuclear power. What the chief British protagonist of
this solution fails to explain, however,
is how the high-powered micro-wave
beam can be constrained into a 98km2
ground antenna without irradiating
all life over a far wider area. Anyone
who has worked with microwave beam
transmissions knows that substantial
overspill occurs that could be lethal.
The minimalist web page on the subject (www.fnc.co.uk/sbsp/) overlooks
this matter entirely, which rather casts
doubt on the fundamental feasibility of
the entire project. But now is far too early to prejudge the outcome, especially
as the detailed report on this scheme
has yet to be published.
Practical Electronics | November | 2021
