Introduction The terms codes and standards are almost synonymous; they have essentially the same meaning.. They are dif-ferent in that codes are usually requirements imposed by regulator
Trang 1Codes and Standards
C Parker,International Lead Zinc Research Organization, Durham, NC, USA
& 2009 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.
Introduction
The terms codes and standards are almost synonymous;
they have essentially the same meaning They are
dif-ferent in that codes are usually requirements imposed by
regulatory authorities, whereas standards are consensus
documents adopted voluntarily by organizations with a
common interest in a technology, product, or practice A
standard issued by a professional organization as a
con-sensus document may subsequently be imposed on an
industry or product as a requirement and subsequently
referred to as a code Regardless of the terminology,
codes and standards play an enormous, beneficial role in
the lives of ordinary citizens of every society We
pur-chase appliances for our homes with little thought of
their power requirements; we are confident that our
homes’ electrical systems will provide a suitable voltage
and connecting plug for any appliance we choose A
screw can be purchased in one country to fit a product
made in another, and the colors of traffic lights have the
same significance around the globe Standards are
cred-ited with enhancing quality, reliability, safety, efficiency,
and utility of the products we use while concurrently
reducing their cost-to-value ratios As electrochemical
power sources increase in numbers and applications, they
will increasingly be affected by codes and standards that
define their electrical attributes and the attributes of their
likely loads and applications
A cursory search of the Web for ‘codes and standards’,
for ‘standards’, and for ‘standards-making organizations’
produced, in round numbers, millions of hits The
mag-nitudes of these numbers are daunting and so large as to
be relatively useless; but they are suggestive of the impact
of standards on our societies Adding descriptive
ad-jectives, of course, yields more manageable numbers The
focus of this article is electrochemical power sources, for
example, batteries The Institute of Electrical and
Elec-tronic Engineers (IEEE) is a standards development
or-ganization and a likely source for standards relevant to
batteries A search of the IEEE website (www.ieee.org)
for standards with titles that include the term batteries
yielded about 44 hits Each entry included the title of the
standard and the year it was approved as a standard The
44 titles provided additional information Nineteen were
relevant to lead–acid batteries, 10 to nickel–cadmium
batteries, and 15 were generic, that is, they did not
spe-cify the type of battery Some titles also referred to
specific applications These application terms included,
for example, terms such as stationary, photovoltaics, stand-alone photovoltaics, uninterruptible power sys-tems, remote hybrid power syssys-tems, nuclear power generation, emergency standby power, photovoltaic (PV) hybrid power, and rail vehicles The website suggested that abstracts were provided for some standards, but none appeared with these entries
The electrical output of electrochemical power sources is direct current (d.c.) electricity; however, many, perhaps most, of the loads they support will require al-ternating current (a.c.) electricity at a standard voltage and frequency A likely result is the evolution of a family
of d.c to a.c inverters with a.c voltages that are com-patible with current standards and, with continued growth, additional standardization to define a family of interface parameters for the power source–inverter interface These standards would reduce the number of inverter parameters that affect designs to a more man-ageable number, and they would enhance the likelihood that component parts produced in multiple countries would work well together
International travelers are routinely reminded of the benefits of standardization by the necessity of acquiring adapters for personal items such as hair dryers and computers/chargers purchased in their native countries
to the electrical systems of some foreign countries The electrical systems among countries are not necessarily standardized Standard voltages and frequencies in North America differ from their counterparts in Europe, for example, because the attributes of these different systems were established (and standardized locally) before international standardization became the norm
A brief historical perspective of standardization is of interest Relics from ancient civilizations suggest that standards have been used for thousands of years; the earliest standards were physical weights and measures against which other weights and measures could be compared As trade and commerce developed, written documents, that is, contracts, evolved, which recorded mutual agreements between suppliers and consumers for products and services Industrialization in the nineteenth century exposed an urgent need for standardization in the interest of efficiency, economy, and safety The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, one of the first voluntary standardizing organizations, was estab-lished in 1880 when, according to their records, over
50 000 fatalities a year were being caused by explosions in pressure systems By the close of the nineteenth century,
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