1700 Regulatory Approvals Revoked In South Korea

June 19, 2021 by Chris Lott 40 Comments

For the first time since its inception, the Korea Communications Commission this week revoked the regulatory approvals of 1,696 telecommunications devices from 378 companies, both foreign and domestic. Those companies must recall unsold inventory from the shelves, and prove conformity of existing products already sold. In addition, the companies may not submit new applications for these items for one year. It’s not clear what would happen to already-sold equipment if the manufacturer is unable to prove conformity as requested — perhaps a recall? Caught up in this are CCTV products, networking equipment, Bluetooth speakers, and drones from companies like Huawei, DJI, and even Samsung.

The heart of the issue are what’s known as Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) between countries to officially recognize of each other’s certification testing laboratories (or Conformity Assessment Bodies, CAB, in the lingo of the industry). Currently ten countries (USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, and Australia), the 27 member states of the EU, Taiwan and Hong Kong all have MRAs with each other. Based on these MRAs, a Korean manufacturer could have a product tested by a laboratory in Israel, for example, and all would be kosher with the KCC.

At the center of attention is the Bay Area Compliance Laboratories (BACL), established in 1996 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. BACL has laboratories all over the world (USA, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and mainland China). Except for those in mainland China, all BACL laboratories are acceptable per the MRAs. The KCC received a tip last year that some compliance test reports for some products might be defective.

A six-month investigation in cooperation with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) resulted in the announcement this week. Korean companies, 378 of them to be exact, had submitted test reports from BACL Sunnyvale which appeared to be appropriate. But on further investigation, it was learned that the actual testing was done by BACL laboratories in mainland China and only the reports were prepared in Sunnyvale.

It’s not clear whether these companies were knowingly playing fast and loose with the rules, whether BACL was complicit, if it was just a misunderstanding of the intricacies of the regulations and MRAs, or a combination of all three. Regardless, the KCC said that intent doesn’t matter according the their rules. It also has not been suggested that the products themselves are problematic, nor has anyone suggested that BACL’s Chinese laboratories performed slipshod work — rather, the KCC says it has no choice but to proceed with the revocation based on the applicable laws.

The Regulatory Side Of Rolling Your Own Moderate Solar Farm

June 17, 2021 by Donald Papp 25 Comments

[Russell Graves] lives in Idaho and recently connected his solar installation to the grid, which meant adhering to regulatory requirements for both the National Electric Code (NEC) as well as complying with the local power company’s own regulations. His blog post is an interesting look at the whole regulatory process and experience, and is of interest to anyone curious about running their own solar farm, whether they have plans to connect it to the grid or not.

A circuit breaker that met NEC code, but not the power company’s requirements.

The power company has a very different set of priorities from the NEC, and part of [Russell]’s experience was in having to meet requirements that weren’t documented in the expected places, so study of the materials didn’t cut it. In particular, the power company needed the system to have disconnects with conductors that visually move out of position when disconnected. [Russell] was using NEC-compliant circuit breakers that met NEC code, but they didn’t meet the power company requirement for conductors that can be visually confirmed as being physically disconnected. Facing a deadline, [Russell] managed to finesse a compliant system that was approved, and everything got signed off just as winter hit.

How well does his solar farm work out? Sometimes the panels produce a lot of power, sometimes nearly nothing, but it has been up and running for all of winter and into spring. Over the winter, [Russell] pulled a total of 3.1 MWh from the grid, mainly because his home is heated with electric power. But once spring hit, he started pushing considerably more into the grid than he was pulling; on some days his setup produces around 95 kWh, of which about 70 kWh gets exported.

[Russell] didn’t go straight to setting up his own modest solar farm; we saw how he began by making his own ideal of a perfect off-grid office shed that ran on solar power, but it has certainly evolved since then and we’re delighted to see that he’s been documenting every bit of the journey.