At present (September 2005) in Australia it is not compulsory to test for the electrical immunity of most items. Immunity is how the item responds to external electrical noise, whether conducted up the power cord or radiated through space.
That is the regulatory situation but the reality is otherwise- customers get very upset when some device or other that they have paid money for ceases to function properly every now and then. Serious thought should be given to the immunity of every electrical or electronic item.
At Emc Test Lab we have some low cost tests available to get a feel for what the immunity will be in the field or if it is justified the larger test laboratories can do full immunity testing to the relevant Australian or European standards.
It is far better to find out about possible problems when the device is at the prototype stage- so test early.
Recently (October 2005) we have added a 5kV spike generator to our immunity test equipment- it soon makes things go badly wrong.
