Safety

The role of safety regulations is to ensure power supplies are manufactured with in-built protections against fire, electric shock and injury. These are to keep human operators and end users safe whilst also ensuring systems perform adequately and safely in their application’s conditions.

Different applications have different safety requirements and so there are various electrical safety standards to meet the unique needs of market sectors. One of the sectors with the most stringent safety requirements is the medical industry, and so system designers looking for no-compromises in safety can turn to medically certified components.

Electrical safety for medical systems is governed by the IEC/EN 60601-1 standard which sets out measures to protect against electric shock. The third edition of this standard sets out the requirements for MOOP and MOPP protections.

MOOP stands for means of operator protection, and power supplies with MOPP certifications are perfect if you’re designing a medical device that will not come into contact with patients like laboratory equipment, The 2xMOOP classification requires an isolation of 1500Vac, double insulation and a creepage of 5mm. For the purpose of MOPs, creepage is the distance along the surface of insulating material.

Other methods of protection (MOPs) include safety insulation and the use of protective earth connections: earthing to protect equipment users from electric shock.

For devices that are used close to patients, IEC 60601-1 sets out the need for means of patient protection (MOPP). For 2xMOPP certifications, power supplies need to have an isolation of 4000Wav, a creepage of 8mm and double insulation. Whilst it can be tempting to opt for often cheaper MOOP certified power supplies, the added cost of isolating equipment from patients to remove the need of MOPP can make the design of your system extremely difficult.

For Industrial applications, the introduction of the application independent standard EN 61204-7 offers an exciting safety guarantee for system designers. This standard defines safety requirements for low voltage switch mode power supplies and exists to reduce the risk of injury by electric shock, fire and mechanical hazards. System designers concerned about the safety aspects of EMI emissions should take into account components certified for EN 61000-2-10 and for radiated emissions EN55022.

For ITE, communication technology, audio/video & similar type of equipment IEC/EN/UL 62368-1 is the recognised standard. This standard covers hazard based safety engineering (HSBE).

We can help identify the applicable safety standard for your chosen application. Get in touch with us today and we can work with you to identify the power supply that is right for you!

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