- Definition
- IEC 62133-2 is the IEC standard covering safety requirements for portable sealed secondary lithium cells and for batteries assembled from them, and it is the reference most national battery safety schemes are built on.
This page defines the term. For what it means in practice, see UN 38.3 in practice: what is tested, and what the shipper must hold.
What it covers
IEC 62133-2 addresses the safety of the cell and of the battery pack built from it. The tests are abuse tests: the standard is trying to establish what happens when the product is misused, mishandled or fails, and whether the outcome is contained.
Part 2 of the standard covers lithium systems. Part 1 covers nickel systems, which is why the two are numbered separately rather than being editions of the same document.
How it relates to UN 38.3
They are different requirements with different purposes, and passing one says nothing about the other.
UN 38.3 is a transport regime. It establishes that a battery can be moved. IEC 62133-2 is a product safety standard. It establishes that the battery is safe in use. A battery can pass UN 38.3 and fail IEC 62133-2, and the reverse is also possible.
In practice most serious suppliers hold both, and the two documents are requested together during supplier qualification.
Where it sits in national schemes
National and regional battery safety requirements are frequently derived from, or aligned with, IEC 62133-2. That is what makes it useful: a single test programme against this standard can often be used as the basis for several markets, with local deviations handled separately.
As always, the authoritative text is the standard itself, and conformity is established by testing rather than by declaration. The IEC publishes the standard; it does not test products or issue certificates.