Preliminary Assessment of Anticipated Availability and Utilization of Independent Test Laboratories to Support Certification and Enforcement of DOE'S Energy-Efficiency Standards Program

摘要

The DOE Conservation Program for Consumer Products requires the testing of products to determine whether they meet applicable energy-efficiency standards. Certification testing will take place at the manufacturers' facilities, while monitoring and enforcement usually take place at or by an independent test laboratory (ITL). Specifically, monitoring will take place at ITLs except in the case of trade-association programs where testing is generally conducted by trade-association representatives. ITLs will be utilized by DOE for all enforcement testing. Monitoring- and enforcement-test requirements are provided in Sections 2 and 3. Estimates and associated analysis of existing ITL capacity are given in Section 4. Section 5 compares ITL capacity and projected test-facility requirements and examines the cost and difficulty of eliminating projected deficits. A summary and conclusions are presented in Section 6. Appendix A presents an analysis of the sensitivity of projected ITL requirements to changes in key variables. (ERA citation 06:014312)