Proposed changes to Permitted Development rights for small wind turbine

[-rick-]

24 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

However, things go wrong, especially electronics. Yes it "should" cut of the power if it doesnt see "mains power". Should is doing a lot of heavy lifting on a device thats likely sub £200.

 

The big brands offering things like this cost a more than that. If the regs say that to legally sell this product it 'MUST' ensure that the pins are not live unless a mains signal has been seen within the last 20ms then either the product complies and is safe (ie, wont kill anyone even if they touch live pins) or it doesn't comply and is therefore defective.

 

That should be the end of it.

 

24 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

With a plug in panel, if it doesnt detect the mains power has gone, the pins are live. Single point of failure. 

 

Going to a situation of single point of failure is a significant step backwards. The results of which, as ive already said, are forseeable.

 

Really not sure what you are getting at here. The number of things that have to happen to produce mains output from a solar panel these days is huge. The computers involved in generating the waveforms are far far more powerful than desktop computers from the early/mid 2000s.

 

It's not a case that the waveform will be produced unless blocked by a safety system, it's more that the system can't produce a waveform unless a long list of conditions are met.

 

This is technical but heres a reference design from TI for a microinverter. Not suggesting you take anything from it other than it's not a simple system that will just continue working in a fault condition (the document doesn't touch on the safety side unfortunately).

 

https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tiduf63a/tiduf63a.pdf?ts=1774517354380

 

The MCU (brain) they use to do the control is this :

 

https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tms320f280039c.pdf?ts=1774508361987

 

Again not really an accessible document, but you'll note that it supports various functional safety standards. Those are some pretty rigorous standards and if you design a product to meet them then you can make guarantees about the behavior. ie, make it fail safe. Edit: I'm not saying this is currently part of the regs for this, seems a little OTT for the situation, but it's certainly something that could be added to regs if a need is identified.

Edited Thursday at 22:17 by -rick-

[Dillsue]

Safety never comes with an absolute guarantee and its all managed/regulated on the basis of what is reasonable.

 

Theres 1600 people killed on british roads each year yet were still all free to drive at potentially lethal speeds.

 

Theres 1000s die prematurely each year due to poor urban air quality yet we can still burn oil/gas/diesel/wood in urban areas.

 

Plug in solar, as with anything at dangerous voltage, might injure or even kill the odd person that misuses it or CHOOSES to personally import it and potentially bypass UK/EU safety regulation, but their loss is likely to be outweighed by the benefits

[Dillsue]

10 hours ago, Roger440 said:

With a plug in panel, if it doesnt detect the mains power has gone, the pins are live. Single point of failure. 

 

Going to a situation of single point of failure is a significant step backwards. The results of which, as ive already said, are forseeable.

I'm pretty sure that within compliant inverters there's multiple layers of disconnection so there's unlikely to be a scenario where a single failure within the inverter will keep the power on the plug

[SteamyTea]

14 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

kill the odd person that misuses it or CHOOSES to personally import it and potentially bypass UK/EU safety regulation, but their loss is likely to be outweighed by the benefits

 

https://darwinawards.com/

[Dillsue]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

 

https://darwinawards.com/

I'm sure the regulators do think of those but most certainly dont document those thoughts!

[saveasteading]

2 hours ago, Dillsue said:

their loss is likely to be outweighed by the benefits

Is this a principle similar to the self-extinction of vaccine deniers?

[Dillsue]

1 hour ago, saveasteading said:

Is this a principle similar to the self-extinction of vaccine deniers?

 Similar to importing hazardous kit from un regulated sources.....the majority can probably evaluate the risks and manage accordingly, those that dont have a higher risk of "self extinction"

[sgt_woulds]

The EU is starting make changes to online selling.  We can only hope that our leaders can take note:

 

EU to impose fines on online platforms importing unsafe products

[-rick-]

9 minutes ago, sgt_woulds said:

The EU is starting make changes to online selling.  We can only hope that our leaders can take note:

 

The excuse before we left the EU was that it was EU rules preventing us from doing anything. Now we've left we could have done whatever, but the government/officials were all too busy dealing with brexit. We'd be further forward with addressing this issue if we'd stayed in the EU.

[markc]

We are seeing a lot of stuff coming out of Europe that is garbage! China is using CE (China export) to run stuff through Europe using the confusion (or ignorance) of the difference between a genuine CE and CE (China export) marking.

Edited 15 hours ago by markc

[-rick-]

2 minutes ago, markc said:

We are seeing a lot of stuff coming out of Europe that is garbage! China is using CE (China export) to run stuff through Europe using the confusion (or ignorance) of the difference between a genuine CE and CE (China export) marking.

 

Sure that's been the problem for ages and what is trying to be addressed AFAIK.

[Nickfromwales]

7 hours ago, sgt_woulds said:

We can only hope that our leaders can

Tie their own shoelaces. 

[Roger440]

7 hours ago, -rick- said:

 

Sure that's been the problem for ages and what is trying to be addressed AFAIK.

 

Its unfixable. Whatever process you put in place, they just make it look the same. Of fake the paperwork. Or whatever.

 

You can by rolls of the CE stickers anywhere in China.

[-rick-]

15 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Its unfixable. Whatever process you put in place, they just make it look the same. Of fake the paperwork. Or whatever.

 

Other countries have made big progress by having customs and/or trading standards equivalent go pick up stuff off the shelves and verify it and then penalise the importers if the right certifications don't exist. You are never going to zero but dodgy imports can be reduced significantly with a bit of enforcement effort.

 

With a lot of electronics (depending on what it is) there are 3rd party testing requirements that have to be done by licensed labs so if those certifications aren't available it's pretty easy to stop. Rules are less strict on other things so it would be harder to stop fake 'CE' imports of toys, etc.

[Roger440]

1 minute ago, -rick- said:

 

Other countries have made big progress by having customs and/or trading standards equivalent go pick up stuff off the shelves and verify it and then penalise the importers if the right certifications don't exist. You are never going to zero but dodgy imports can be reduced significantly with a bit of enforcement effort.

 

With a lot of electronics (depending on what it is) there are 3rd party testing requirements that have to be done by licensed labs so if those certifications aren't available it's pretty easy to stop. Rules are less strict on other things so it would be harder to stop fake 'CE' imports of toys, etc.

 

You "can" do checks. Indeed ive pointed this out already up there ^^^^

 

Sadly however, we wont do any checks. This is the UK. Nothing works anymore.

 

Paperwork checks are pointless anyway, as said certificates will just be forged.

 

Only a proper physical check will achieve anything.

[-rick-]

4 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Sadly however, we wont do any checks. This is the UK. Nothing works anymore.

 

And this is the thing to fix. As said earlier, you fix the root cause, don't apply regulations on top based on the assumption that you are too weak to fix the cause.

 

4 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Paperwork checks are pointless anyway, as said certificates will just be forged.

Only a proper physical check will achieve anything.

 

Not sure what you mean by physical check. You won't be able to tell much by physically looking at products. (product depending, egregious things more obvious but lots of subtlties no)

 

By checking the certificates what I mean is communicating with the labs who supposedly issued them to check they are geniune and confirm they relate to the product in front of you. Historically most of the China Export stuff hasn't even bothered to go to the stage of faking these certificates. They just put some general (not product specific) certificates up and call it a day.

 

Amazon should be checking this stuff on things on their store. They don't and offload the responsibility to the seller (not sure that legally holds up in the first place but if it doesn't the law can be changed). Going after Amazon (and aliexpress, etc) would stop a lot of the crap stuff getting in. High street retaillers, etc, are already pretty good.