EN IEC 62552 Household Cooling Appliances - Specifications and Test Methods

The standard “EN IEC 62552 Household cooling appliances - Specifications and test methods”, which is based on a European standard and later published by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), consists of a number of sub-sections published under the same title. Namely,

• The standard “EN 62552-1 Part 1: General requirements” describes the essential characteristics of domestic and similar refrigerating appliances cooled by internal natural convection or forced air circulation, and the test methods for checking these characteristics. For declaration purposes, the tests defined in this standard are considered as type tests to assess the basic design and operation of a refrigerating appliance. This standard does not define requirements for production sampling or for conformity assessment or certification. Furthermore, this standard does not define a regime for verification testing, as these vary by region and country. Wherever possible, it is preferable to apply all the tests specified to a single unit when the performance of a particular type of refrigerating appliance is to be verified in accordance with this standard. The tests may also be carried out individually to examine a specific characteristic.
• The standard “EN 62552-2 Part 2: Performance requirements” describes the essential characteristics of domestic refrigerating appliances cooled by internal natural convection or forced air circulation, and test methods for checking the characteristics. This standard describes methods for determining the performance requirements. Although there are some commonalities in the setups for the different tests (and therefore it may be an advantage to apply them all to a single sample), these are separate tests to assess specific characteristics of the sample being tested. However, this standard does not specify a procedure for generalizing the results obtained from the sample test results to an estimate of the characteristics of the entire population from which that sample was selected.
• The standard “EN 62552-3 Part 3: Energy consumption and volume” describes the essential characteristics of household and similar refrigeration appliances cooled by internal natural convection or forced air circulation, and the test methods for checking these characteristics. This standard describes methods for determining the energy consumption characteristics and defines how they can be installed to estimate the energy consumption under different usage and climatic conditions. This standard also describes the determination of volume.

All sections of the standard have been substantially updated to cope with new testing requirements, new product configurations, the advent of electronic product controls, and computer-based test room data collection and processing equipment. For more efficient analysis and to better characterize key product characteristics under different operating conditions, test data from most of the energy tests in this section are now divided into components (such as steady-state operation and defrost and recovery). The approach to determining energy consumption has been completely revised, and many internal checks have been added to ensure that data that conform to the requirements of the standard are as accurate and of the highest quality as possible.

This standard now provides a method for quantifying each of the relevant energy components and approaches for how these can be combined to estimate energy under different conditions. The expectation is that these approaches will select the most applicable components and weights when determining both local performance and energy efficiency criteria for different regions and using a single set of global test measurements.

In this standard, no thermal mass (test packs) is included in any compartment for energy consumption measurements, and compartment temperatures are based on the average of the air temperature sensors (compared to the temperature in the warmest test pack). Additionally, there is significant variation in the location of the temperature sensors in the unfrozen compartments.

According to this standard, the energy consumption test now has two specified ambient temperatures (16 degrees and 32 degrees).

This standard also added a load processing energy efficiency test. Also added tests for wine storage appliances (both performance and energy).

Our organization, which has been trying to support businesses from every sector with its testing, measurement, analysis and evaluation studies carried out in a wide range for years, has a strong staff that closely follows the developments in the world in the field of science and technology and constantly improves itself. In this context, testing services in accordance with the "EN IEC 62552 Household cooling devices - Specifications and test methods" standard are also provided to businesses.