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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 167 / Wednesday, September 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules
laboratories that test clothes washers with hot water usage less than 0.1
gallons already use water meters with the proposed more precise resolution.
The proposal to explicitly allow for the use of submersible temperature loggers would specify an additional means for determining wash water temperatures to confirm whether a wash temperature greater than 135 F defined as an Extra Hot Wash has been achieved during the wash cycle. As discussed, other methods for measuring wash water temperatures may provide inconclusive results, thus requiring retesting of cycles or additional exploratory testing to accurately determine the wash water temperature.
Explicitly providing for the use of submersible temperature loggers may avoid the need for such additional testing. Based on a market survey of submersible data loggers, the cost of a submersible data logger is around $230
for each device. As discussed, laboratories may have multiple test stands, and DOE expects that a laboratory would purchase a separate data logger for each test stand. As an example, for a laboratory with 10 test stands, the material cost associated with purchasing submersible data loggers for each test stand would total around $2,300. DOE expects that the recurring cost savings enabled by the use of submersible temperature loggers due to reducing the need for re-testing certain cycles or performing additional exploratory testing would substantially outweigh the one-time purchase cost associated with each device and therefore has not included this cost in its summary of costs associated with this NOPR.
DOE requests comment, specifically from manufacturers and third-party test laboratories, on whether costs would be incurred for each laboratory as a result of the proposals in this NOPR to specify more precise hot water meters and to explicitly allow the use of submersible temperature loggers; and if so, the total incurred cost associated with outfitting each test stand with the specified instrumentation. DOE also requests comment on the potential cost savings to be expected from enabling the use of submersible temperature loggers.
The proposal to extend the load size table would apply only to clothes washers with capacities exceeding 6.0
ft3. Any such clothes washers currently on the market have already been granted a test procedure waiver from DOE, which specifies the same extended capacity table.
The proposal to more explicitly define user-adjustable automatic WFCS would provide greater specification of DOEs
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existing definitions and could potentially alleviate test burden resulting from an incorrect application of the existing language. The proposals specifying updated language regarding cycle selection for clothes washers with a range of wash time settings would improve repeatability and reproducibility without imposing any additional test burden. The proposal to specify how the energy test cycle flow charts apply to clothes washers that internally generate hot water reflects DOEs interpretation of the current Cold Wash/Cold Rinse flowchart and subsequent flowcharts for the Warm Rinse temperature selections for this type of clothes washer; in addition, comments from interested parties suggest that this interpretation is generally consistent with that of manufacturers and third-party laboratories. The proposal to specify that the energy test cycle flow charts be evaluated using the Maximum load size would improve repeatability and reproducibility without imposing any additional test burden.
The proposal to specify that network settings must be disabled for testing under Appendix J2 would impact only clothes washers with network settings that are enabled by default. DOE is not aware of any clothes washers currently on the market that meet these characteristics, and as such DOE does not expect this proposal to change how any current models are tested.
The proposal to add product-specific enforcement provisions to accommodate the potential for lot-to-lot variation in RMC would extend current productspecific enforcement provisions for clothes washers to accommodate up to a 3-percentage point variation in the corrected RMC measurement based on the test cloth lot used for testing, and would not impact manufacturers testing costs.
The proposal to delete obsolete definitions, metrics, and the waiver section would not impact manufacturers testing costs because these sections of the test procedure are no longer in use.
The proposal to move all test clothrelated sections of the test procedures into Appendix J3 would simplify Appendix J2 without any changes to the test conduct or cost to manufacturers.
The proposal to add additional test cloth qualification procedures to Appendix J3 would not affect manufacturer cost because the proposal would codify existing industry-standard practices.
DOE requests comment on its characterization of the expected costs of the proposed amendments to Appendix
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J2 and Appendix J3 and on DOEs preliminary determination that the proposed amendments would not be unduly burdensome.
b. Appendix J Proposed Test Procedure In this NOPR, DOE is also proposing a new Appendix J that would include, in addition to the amendments discussed previously for Appendix J2, significant additional changes that would affect the measured efficiency of a clothes washer. Because DOE would use the new Appendix J for the evaluation and issuance of any updated efficiency standards, and for determining compliance with those standards, the use of the proposed new Appendix J would not be required until such a time as compliance with any amended energy conservation standards that are developed with consideration of new Appendix J are required. The ongoing energy conservation standards rulemakings for RCWs and CCWs would consider the impact of such changes to manufacturers. The differences between Appendix J2 as proposed in this NOPR
and the proposed Appendix J are the following:
1 Modifying the hot water supply temperature range;
2 Modifying the clothes washer preconditioning requirements;
3 Modifying the Extra-Hot Wash threshold temperature;
4 Adding a measurement and calculation of average cycle time;
5 Requiring the testing of no more than two Warm Wash/Cold Rinse cycles, and no more than two Warm Wash/Warm Rinse cycles;
6 Measuring RMC on each cycle within the energy test cycle, rather than on cycles specifically dedicated to measuring RMC;
7 Reducing the number of load sizes from three to two for units with automatic WFCS;
8 Modifying the load size definitions consistent with two, rather than three, load sizes;
9 Updating the water fill levels to be used for testing to reflect the modified load size definitions;
10 Specifying the installation of single-inlet clothes washers, and simplifying the test procedure for semiautomatic clothes washers;
11 Defining new performance metrics that are functions of the weighted-average load size rather than clothes container capacity;
12 Updating the number of annual clothes washer cycles from 295 to 234;
and 13 Updating the number of hours assigned to low-power mode to be based on the clothes washers average
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