EU Common Charger Directive.

[Sirius Glass]

Alan - Anyone who leaves chargers plugged in is taking a gamble. It all depends on the quality of the charger, but also your wall wiring as well. Houses are burning down all the time. And it's not due to a just lot of junk lithium batteries out there, because those are basically symptomatic of the junk-everything products they come with, including questionable chargers. Multi-outlet power strips also come into play. They're voodoo with e-bike chargers; and local fire departments have begun mandatory inspections of e-bike shops in that respect.

I'm not too worried about our Mac computers, which are obviously high quality and relatively low wattage demand. But now that all kinds of things are cordless, and predominantly trashy quality cordless, there is good reason for concern. It amazes me just how much outright counterfeit brand name cordless products there are even on Amazon Prime listings. If the price is too good to be true, that's exactly the case.

Generic batteries also spook the heck out of me. I have a lot of background having to deal with the consequences of those, due to our repair department. It came to the point that the city Fire Marshall wouldn't even allow us to test those anymore - too risky. Any generic battery which showed up was fully plastic wrapped, and set aside in a barrel outside the building for weekly transport straight to hazmat.
True industrial batteries, along with their chargers, are made much differently.

Three good points that concern me as an Electrical Engineer.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

This directive doesn't touch high current devices - nobody charges those via measley USB cable - so no worries.

I've replaced plenty of inflated iPhone batteries that had damaged phone body and were hazardous to operate, but luckily - no accidents/fires reported.
My colleague at the time did often replace inflated MacBook batteries - again, no drama to report except the question: why the hell people keep using devices in such a state where now additional bonus of flammable materials under pressure are involved?

So the reality is somewhere between doom scenarios, law and people being educated about batteries.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

How will the common charger directive play with the lithium ion batteries in which only its own unique charger must be used to prevent fires?

So the danger arises from lack of standardization/common charging protocol?

There exists AA lookalike Li batteries that use all kinds of Li battery chargers on the market instead of unique snowflake one. Including universal chargers that determine the type of battery inserted on their own, applying respective charging scenario.

Chemistry is the same, built the same. Therefore the possibility of such a directive in the first place? Seems to me like so - just stick charging control chip in the phone in place of headphone jack and be good.
Apple already does similar things since iPhone 5 (at least) which still had headphone jack.

So it seems that there aren't even engineering challenges involved. Having control on board means that there's exactly less dangers from using random chargers as no longer the battery is naked and powerless in front of iffy/mismatched chargers, but is now protected via control IC inside and said charger just has to provide some current at some voltage in range.
Safer.

I'd argue that such priced devices SHOULD have protection inside A LONG TIME AGO.
Instead of relying on human (error).

 

[koraks]

I'd argue that such priced devices SHOULD have protection inside A LONG TIME AGO.

And indeed, they have. All gadgets with an integrated, non-user-replaceable battery have a charging circuit which protects against over-charge, over-discharge and handles trickle charging. Over-temperature protection is integrated in the Lithium battery pack itself in most cases. None of these measures of course can offer protection against manufacturing quality issues that can result in runaway effects, which in turn manifests in either dramatically reduced capacity, and/or thermal runaway issues, and/or battery bulging (usually a combination of all three). The IC's to handle basic Lithium charging functionality and local power switching start at something like $0.025/pc. and only require a handful of additional passive components.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

In such a world then and in practice - such a directive seems the logical next step

 

[Agulliver]

I live in a civilised country with strict wiring regulations, and the ring mains in my house were checked by an electrician just three years ago....so I have zero concerns about leaving chargers plugged in where that is the most convenient thing to do. I also don't have any truly cheap junk chargers. The devices I own should all have protection circuits, as should the chargers. Electrical fires are *extremely* uncommon here.

ebikes are a different kettle of red herrings as the current used and capacity of the batteries is much higher than any phone, tablet, camera, audio recorder or other small device.

It *is* a pain to have up to four different cables for these pocketable devices purely because the manufacturers made the choice to use a non-standard connection. The only one which is justifiable is my smart watch which has a charger connection that is magnetic rather than a socket, so as to ensure the watch is somewhat water proof.

 

[koraks]

I live in a civilised country with strict wiring regulations, and the ring mains in my house were checked by an electrician just three years ago....so I have zero concerns about leaving chargers plugged in where that is the most convenient thing to do.

The risks associated with leaving chargers etc. plugged in have virtually nothing to do with the quality of the electrical installation in your home. The risks are virtually entirely inherent to the design and manufacturing quality of the adapters themselves.

The devices I own should all have protection circuits, as should the chargers. Electrical fires are *extremely* uncommon here.

Yes, all devices have protection circuits, which can still fail. And house fires are actually fairly common, with electrical faults being a major cause. For instance, in the UK, pretty good data have been gathered especially in the past, which tells us that e.g. in 2010, out of ca. 43000 (!) fires in homes (yes, that's over 100 house fires every single day), roughly 15% (ca. 60k) instances were caused by appliances, wiring etc. Keep in mind that these numbers predate the rise to prominence of electrical bikes, scooters and cars, which presently causes a rather dramatic increase in electrically-caused house fires. Bikes in particular are a big problem because people bring the battery inside and then keep it plugged into the charger overnight, which increases both change and impact of the risks involved.

So electrical fires are most certainly NOT extremely uncommon in the UK given that there's 1-2 dozen happening every day. Here, have fun with the data: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-data-tables

Of course, the absolute odds of your individual home burning to the ground due to an electrical fire are pretty slim. But with something as impactful as this, I wonder how much nonchalance we can afford.
And yes, I keep a hole slew of AC adapters and equipment plugged in all the time as well. Smart? Not really. Lazy, yes.

PS: as to the protection circuits, keep in mind that in a typical 'phone charger' (again; misnomer; AC-DC adapter is a better term), these are very, very rudimentary indeed. There are roughly two approaches to doing the AC-DC conversion in these devices. The first is the old way that used the AC reactance of a fairly big capacitor to drop the voltage, followed by rectification and regulation. This is an inherently inefficient approach (i.e. the device gets hot by design, during normal operation) and the failure modes of this circuit can be particularly nasty. The more common (fortunately) approach today is basically a very small switch-mode power supply, in which the safety measures are basically the wire thickness in the small HF transformer (it'll hopefully burn through before it starts to actually burn in case of a failure) and, more importantly, the active protection measures inside the SMPS controller IC that should protect against short-circuit, over-temperature, over-current etc. situations. How effective these measures are, depends largely on the innards of this IC, which is essentially a black box even to the engineers who use these IC's in their device designs. In practice, they appear to work fairly well, but since this is a numbers game, and we have literally billions of these devices kicking around, some of them evidently fail catastrophically from time to time. The actual protection measures are really very limited in your average 'phone charger', while energy density in these devices is going up very rapidly; it's a very, very thin layer of protection indeed.

 

[DREW WILEY]

There is good news too. Plenty of houses will avoid burning down due to defective chargers or batteries, simply because a defective thermostat in some cheap coffee pot will cause it to burn down first.

 

[Sirius Glass]

So the danger arises from lack of standardization/common charging protocol?

There exists AA lookalike Li batteries that use all kinds of Li battery chargers on the market instead of unique snowflake one. Including universal chargers that determine the type of battery inserted on their own, applying respective charging scenario.

Chemistry is the same, built the same. Therefore the possibility of such a directive in the first place? Seems to me like so - just stick charging control chip in the phone in place of headphone jack and be good.
Apple already does similar things since iPhone 5 (at least) which still had headphone jack.

So it seems that there aren't even engineering challenges involved. Having control on board means that there's exactly less dangers from using random chargers as no longer the battery is naked and powerless in front of iffy/mismatched chargers, but is now protected via control IC inside and said charger just has to provide some current at some voltage in range.
Safer.

I'd argue that such priced devices SHOULD have protection inside A LONG TIME AGO.
Instead of relying on human (error).

There have been many examples in the news about electric bicycles and electric scooters make in China that have caught on fire when the wrong charger was used.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Leaving chargers plugging without something to charge will waste power, not a lot of power but with even a few each draining little or no power, the electric bill will climb some amount. Just unplug used chargers.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You are correct. I had forgotten about that because I use batteries and have battery chargers.

Also I do not connect the camera to the computer to download the photographs. I remove the memory cards from the camera and use a card reader attached to the computer, not involving the USB-C connectors on the camera.

 

[wiltw]

Leaving chargers plugging without something to charge will waste power, not a lot of power but with even a few each draining little or no power, the electric bill will climb some amount. Just unplug used chargers.

I have read articles that tell folks to unplug chargers when not in use, saving the electricity they consume. Upon reading your comment on same topic, I finally got off my a$$ to compute the cost...

• Assuming 10 idle chargers left idle for 14 hours each day, if they consume 0.002A (or 0.25W, a generous assumption if they are charging nothing) per hour, over the course of a month they collectively use a wasted 2.8 cents per month (assuming $0.30 per kiloWatt-hour).

 

[mshchem]

I live in a civilised country with strict wiring regulations, and the ring mains in my house were checked by an electrician just three years ago....so I have zero concerns about leaving chargers plugged in where that is the most convenient thing to do. I also don't have any truly cheap junk chargers. The devices I own should all have protection circuits, as should the chargers. Electrical fires are *extremely* uncommon here.

ebikes are a different kettle of red herrings as the current used and capacity of the batteries is much higher than any phone, tablet, camera, audio recorder or other small device.

It *is* a pain to have up to four different cables for these pocketable devices purely because the manufacturers made the choice to use a non-standard connection. The only one which is justifiable is my smart watch which has a charger connection that is magnetic rather than a socket, so as to ensure the watch is somewhat water proof.

Well, reading your post led me to read about a "ring circuit", I learned something!

I use Samsung cheapo tablets and phone, has been USB-C for some time.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

There have been many examples in the news about electric bicycles and electric scooters make in China that have caught on fire when the wrong charger was used.

Phones and laptops tho?

 

[Ivo Stunga]

To be fair, I can't see any reason why ebikes shouldn't take a note from this directive - same stuff, just a tad angrier and the same principles (of security and in principle) apply.
Li-packs certainly aren't fresh tech now.

 

[koraks]

I can't see any reason why ebikes shouldn't take a note from this directive

I do. Firstly, it would be fare more invasive for ebikes than for handheld devices. In case of the latter, it's usually not much more than using a different physical connector and adding two resistors to change an existing e.g. USB-micro design to USB-C. Not so with ebikes which generally come with dedicated chargers that their battery packs plug in, with the charger plugging directly into a wall outlet. There's a technical reason for this...:
Secondly, and more importantly, charging a typical e-bike battery from USB-C would be pushing the limits - or even beyond this. E-bike batteries generally operate at ca. 50V with charge currents up to 3A or so. USB-C through PD can technically provide 5A at 48V according to it specifications, but adapters and cables actually supporting this are presently rare as hen's teeth. Moroever, the actual battery charger would still have to involve a step-up converter to create sufficient headroom for the charger to work (e.g. 48V to 55-60V to charge a 52V battery) and given the currents involved, this would incur significant losses and generate additional heat.

It's just not a very logical step at this point. USB-C for now is focused really on small and handheld devices; practically speaking laptops and smaller (also in an electrical sense, 'smaller').

 

[Ivo Stunga]

To be clear, I didn't meant taking note "in letter", but "in spirit" - aka in principle: one approach/connector to rule them all and have safety and charging control on-board.

One could see EV/ebike charging slots baked in the house/installation in near future, probably and as an example...

 

[koraks]

The situation for EV's s very different than for ebikes. For the latter, no de-facto standard exists that supports present and future requirements the same way that USB-C does/did for handheld devices. EV's are a different story due to the infrastructural aspects and additional network externalities involved. As a result, the type 2 'Mennekes' plug is already the legal standard for EV's in Europe. Legally enforced standardization occurred fairly early on for the obvious reasons for promoting adoption by taking away infrastructural barriers.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

That's about what I meant, yes! Thanks for update.

 

[koraks]

Li-packs certainly aren't fresh tech now.

That's not what this is about, really. From the perspective of the 'charger' directive, it's really irrelevant what kind of battery is used, and, indeed, if any battery is present at all.

 

[Ivo Stunga]

Is it about just a physical connector and no electrical wizardry whatsoever?

 

[Agulliver]

Don't modern "smart" chargers draw virtually no current when no device is connected, and similarly when the connected device is fully charged? I thought the advice to unplug chargers was now considered out of date and unnecessary? With the caveat that there do exist very cheap chargers which don't meet any country's electrical safety standards. And it seems to be those which have caused problems with tablets and phones. Buy a 2 dollarpound charger at your peril.

Though those of us still using older devices, especially cameras which charge via older mini USB connectors, might not benefit from smart chargers. However as @wiltw says, the actual power used and cost incurred are barely noticeable. You'll add more to your electric bill accidentally leaving one modern LED light on in the bathroom for one night than a bunch of chargers being plugged in for a month.

Ebikes and EVs are different issues. The power used to charge those batteries in reasonable time is way more than any USB charger could imagine in it's wildest little dreams. EVs are on another level entirely.

But we're talking about a directive for small, handheld devices. Where there is, in 99% of cases, no earthly reason not to standardise on one connector and one set of specifications for the power offered by the charger and accepted by the devices.

 

[Chan Tran]

That's not what this is about, really. From the perspective of the 'charger' directive, it's really irrelevant what kind of battery is used, and, indeed, if any battery is present at all.

Yes because what taking care of the different characteristic of the batteries is the circuitry built in to the device being charged (the real charger) not the charger (the power supply). Right now USB-PD is capable of 100W max and if you want to charge EBike with it it has to have more capacity which has to be larger and more expensive. So you all have a big, expensive common charger.

 

[koraks]

Is it about just a physical connector and no electrical wizardry whatsoever?

Yes, that's correct. The directive pertains to the physical layer only.

Don't modern "smart" chargers draw virtually no current when no device is connected, and similarly when the connected device is fully charged?

Evidently, only power that's dissipated is drawn from the outlet. But this ignores two facts:
1: Efficiency is less than 100%. A plugged in adapter that doesn't provide any power to a connected device still dissipates a small amount of power. Given the millions of adapters plugged in at any given time, this is a significant chunk of waste.
2: As long as the adapter is plugged in, it constitutes a fire hazard. This is because it does not physically disconnect from the net when it's not providing power to a connected device. It's still 'on'.

I thought the advice to unplug chargers was now considered out of date and unnecessary?

Definitely not. Having said that, your individual power bill won't benefit much from unplugging unused devices.

Though those of us still using older devices, especially cameras which charge via older mini USB connectors, might not benefit from smart chargers.

The connector as such has nothing to do with the laws of thermodynamics, notably the law of preservation of energy. Regardless if a USB-C or micro-USB or whatever fancy plug is present, once a charge controller stops pumping charge into a battery, it effectively ceases (with the exception of a small waste dissipation) to draw current.
The 'smartness' of USB-C, or more appropriately, USB-PD is that it involves communication between the connected devices so they can negotiate the voltage that is delivered by the PD source. Default USB is limited by definition to 5V.

Yes because what taking care of the different characteristic of the batteries is the circuitry built in to the device being charged (the real charger) not the charger (the power supply). Right now USB-PD is capable of 100W max and if you want to charge EBike with it it has to have more capacity which has to be larger and more expensive. So you all have a big, expensive common charger.

Indeed. I can see how USB-PD or a subsequent version will support ebike charging in the future, although this will likely involve rather different cables and connectors than what we're using now, so it likely won't be USB-C anymore. Frankly, the present limit of 5A or so seems like a stretch for a USB-C connector given the surface area of the contacts. Factor in corrosion and fouling and I wonder how well that will hold up in practice in the long run.

 

[koraks]

To clarify some of the points above, consider this annotated image of the innards of a generic/cheap USB 'charger':

Note that this entire thing is always 'live' as long as it's plugged into the outlet. Nothing physically disconnects the circuitry from the input when no load is connected. Both the input and output capacitor constitute a small leakage current. Further leakage occurs by design as the SMPS controller remains turned on and will keep the output capacitor topped up, for which purpose it needs to monitor the output voltage through a small resistor devider that also creates a small minimum load that the controller needs to retain regulation.

Note also that in terms of safety, there's barely anything going on. The most important good thing is that the transformer offers galvanic isolation from the grid, which means that if you drop your connected phone in the bath tub you're sitting in, you won't die (note that this is different from the even simpler reactance-based adapters I also mentioned earlier - these are very likely to kill in this scenario). The MOV current limiter (consider it a resettable fuse) in principle should work OK, but the actual safety it provides depends on the quality of the part itself and how it's implemented. It appears to only protect the primary winding of the transformer, which means it'll do jack-excrement in case the HV buffer cap fails short (see below).

The electrolytic capacitors on both input and output are subject to aging. How long they last is a total wild guess; they may poop out after 5 years, or they may survive for 50. You never know what you're going to get. Once they go, we can only hope they do so in a gentle way and without creating a short on the primary, high-voltage side. No guarantees on this whatsoever. They generally pop or fizzle, spewing caustic electrolyte all over the place, which will then start to degrade all components it touches. If the input capacitor would somehow fail short, you're in trouble in any case as this can easily start a fire (there's nothing that will limit current; the inrush current-limiting resistor isn't designed to handle a dead short and will simply carbonize).

Most of the safety in this thing is down to the black-box safety features inside the SMPS controller. How well these work, is anyone's guess. To take a parallel from linear regulators: these generally have safety features like current limiting and thermal shutdown, but they're also known to fail in violation of their own specifications, and fail short (instead of open) frying everything downstream (I've actually seen this happen on my own workbench).

Again, I admit that I leave my chargers, computer, IoT devices plugged in pretty much all the time. But that doesn't make it a smart, sensible or safe practice. As shown above, the safety measures involved are flimsy at best.
If you think your genuine Apple charger is any better: well, it is, but marginally so. It suffers from many of the same inherent problems as the $1 device shown above, since they're conceptually very similar.
The main difference between the device above and USB-C/PD adapters is that the SMPS circuitry is more advanced and there's additional circuitry that manages the communication / power negotation with downstream devices. None of this means they're inherently safer than what's shown above.
Overall, the reality of the market today is that we're not really prepared to pay for real safety features, which would make these devices more bulky and more costly.