European Union RoHS

• View RoHS Compliance Certificates by Product Series
• View Power-One's EU RoHS Marking Policy
• Return to RoHS Main Page

Power-One’s European Union RoHS Program

The European Union’s RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive 2002/95/EC states that: “Member States shall ensure that, from 1 July 2006, new electrical and electronic equipment put on the market does not contain lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) or polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE).”

The electrical and electronic products covered by the RoHS Directive are: large and small household appliances, IT and telecom equipment, consumer equipment, lighting equipment, electrical and electronic tools, toys, leisure and sports equipment, and automatic dispensers. Not covered are medical devices, monitoring and control instruments, large-scale stationary industrial tools, and military equipment.

Power-One has developed one of the industry’s broadest ranges of RoHS compliant products, including converters designed for customers in exempted industries who choose to meet the Directive. In order to support the full range of compliance options offered by the Directive, Power-One’s unique two-tiered RoHS strategy provides customers with a comprehensive range of tin-lead-solder and lead-free-solder product choices.

This two-tiered strategy is comprised of products categorized by Power-One as “RoHS-5” and “RoHS-6”. Customers exercising the exemption for lead in solder, “for servers, storage, and storage array systems, network infrastructure equipment for switching, signaling, transmission as well as network management for telecommunications,” can obtain Power-One’s RoHS-5, five-substance-compliant products. Customers requiring six-substance compliance, including lead-free solder, can order Power-One’s RoHS-6 products.

Power-One’s RoHS-6 Products are Compliant for All Six Restricted Substances

This is the most commonly implemented form of the Directive. Power-One’s RoHS-6 products do not have any of the six banned substances (Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Hexavalent Chromium, PBB, or PBDE) in amounts exceeding the allowable maximum concentrations defined in the Directive. The Directive delineates these concentrations as the percent of the weight of any individual homogeneous component used within the power supply; not as a percentage of the aggregated weight of all components in an assembled product.

The RoHS Directive allows exemptions when adequate substitutes cannot be found. Exemptions relevant to power conversion products include:

Note that exercising any of the lead exemptions listed above does not alleviate the need to use lead-free solder, including PCB solder finishes. Power-One lists any exemptions that were taken on the RoHS Certificates of Compliance in order to document adherence to the Directive. Power-One’s lead-free-solder RoHS-6 products are identified with a “G” suffix in the part number. Any part number without this “G” suffix is either RoHS-5 compliant or was manufactured prior to RoHS implementation.

Power-One’s RoHS-5 Products Exercise the Lead Solder Exemption

Due to reliability concerns with lead-free-solder processes, the RoHS Directive has a special lead solder exemption. This exemption allows the use of lead in solders for “servers, storage and storage array systems, network infrastructure equipment for switching, signaling, transmission as well as network management for telecommunication”.

Power-One’s “RoHS-5” products are offered for customers choosing to exercise the lead-solder exemption. Note that “RoHS-5” and other commonly-used terms such as “RoHS 5 of 6” and “RoHS 5/6” are not defined in the Directive and have become de-facto RoHS categories. The only difference between Power-One’s RoHS-5 and RoHS-6 products is that RoHS-5 has lead in the solder and RoHS-6 doesn’t; all other restricted-substance rules apply.

The U.K. Department of Trade and Industry defines solder as: “alloys used to create metallurgical bonds between two or more metal surfaces to achieve an electrical and/or physical connection”. Therefore, “solder” includes solder finishes on PCBs and components. In accordance with the lead-solder exemption, RoHS-5 products may or may not use lead in the component leads and/or PCB solder pads. In order to streamline procurement and logistics, Power-One is migrating towards only using lead-free components in all products, including RoHS-5 products using lead-based solders.

Unlike the “G” suffix used for RoHS-6 products, the model numbers of RoHS-5 products do not have any special designations. RoHS-5 compliance can be confirmed by comparing the manufacturing date, stated on the label of the product, to the date listed on the RoHS-5 Certificate of Compliance; available by clicking the link at the top of this page. Since the vast majority of Power-One’s DC-DC converters have always been RoHS-5 compliant (lead on leads and pads was okay), they read “All” instead of having a date.

Power Systems (Rectifier/Distribution Systems) RoHS Compliance

Power-One has made significant progress in addressing RoHS compliance requests received from our Power Systems customers. Since these compliance requests are customer and application dependent, Power-One will continue to support these customers on an individual basis .However currently all Power Systems products are built to at least RoHS-5 compliance and most are built to RoHs-6. For further information, please contact your local Power-One representative.

Embedded Products Lead-Solder-Exemption (RoHS-5) Compliance

The majority of Power-One’s AC-DC and DC-DC products were RoHS-5 compliant prior to the directive deadline, enabling our customers to incorporate them into their products for shipment to their customers prior to July 1, 2006. This included power supplies typically used in applications not covered by the RoHS Directive, such as cassette, DIN-Rail, and modular-architecture products.

Since Power-One’s lead-solder-exempted products do not have any special part number designations, it is recommended that customers confirm compliance by reviewing the date codes on all products whether purchased from distributors or directly from Power-One.