Department of Energy December 16, 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

On August 22, 2016, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking to amend the test procedure for conventional cooking products. That proposed rulemaking serves as the basis for this final rule. Specifically, this final rule amends DOE's test procedure for conventional electric cooking tops to incorporate by reference the relevant sections from European standard EN 60350-2:2013 ``Household electric cooking appliances Part 2: Hobs Methods for measuring performance'' (EN 60350-2:2013). This final rule also includes methods for testing non-circular electric surface units, electric surface units with flexible concentric cooking zones, and full-surface induction cooking tops based on EN 60350-2:2013. In addition, DOE extends the test methods in EN 60350-2:2013 to measure the energy consumption of gas cooking tops by correlating test equipment diameter to burner input rate, including input rates that exceed 14,000 British thermal units per hour. This final rule also includes methods to calculate annual energy consumption and integrated annual energy consumption for conventional cooking tops based on the water-heating test method and provides updates to the sampling plan requirements. The final rule includes minor technical clarifications to the gas heating value correction and other grammatical changes to the regulatory text in the cooking products test procedure that do not alter the substance of the existing test methods. This final rule also repeals the regulatory provisions establishing the test procedure for conventional ovens under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. DOE has determined that the conventional oven test procedure does not accurately represent consumer use as it favors conventional ovens with low thermal mass and does not capture cooking performance-related benefits due to increased thermal mass of the oven cavity.