Energy Conservation Program for Consumer Products: Test Procedures for Residential Water Heaters, Direct Heating Equipment, and Pool Heaters (Standby Mode and Off Mode)

Where appropriate, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is amending its test procedures for residential water heaters, direct heating equipment (DHE), and pool heaters to include provisions for measuring standby mode and off mode energy consumption, as required by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA 2007). DOE has concluded that such amendments are necessary for direct heating equipment and pool heaters, but test procedure amendments are not necessary for residential water heaters, because the existing test procedures for those products already address standby mode and off mode energy use. These test procedure amendments are primarily based upon provisions of the latest version of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Standard 62301 (Second Edition 2011-01), "Household electrical appliances--Measurement of standby power," which is incorporated by reference. For direct heating equipment and pool heaters, this final rule also adds new calculations to determine the annual energy consumption associated with product operation in standby mode and off mode, and it modifies the existing energy consumption equations to integrate standby mode and off mode energy consumption into the calculation of overall annual energy consumption of these products. For pool heaters only, the standby mode and off mode energy consumption is integrated into the efficiency metric. This rulemaking also adopts a number of definitions for key terms, as well as clarifies the rounding guidance and sampling provisions for the new measurement of standby mode and off mode.