The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released an updated proposal that will establish an international quality standard for photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing. The document is intended for immediate use by PV manufacturers when producing modules on an industrial scale so they can increase investor, utility, and consumer confidence in PV system performance.

 

The new technical report, titled Updated Proposal for a Guide for Quality Management Systems for PV Manufacturing: Supplemental Requirements to ISO 9001-2008, provides PV manufacturers the opportunity to begin to use the specification proposed for release in Technical Specification IEC/TS 62941, "Guideline for increased confidence in PV module design qualification and type approval." Technical Specification IEC/TS 62941, which is to be finalized in late 2015, will describe aspects of the quality management system that need to be in place when producing modules on an industrial scale.
 

"Our recent research on 50,000 systems found that, during the time period we studied, just 0.1% of all PV systems were affected by damaged or underperforming modules and less than 1% experienced hardware problems each year," said Sarah Kurtz, one of eight authors of the technical report and a research fellow at NREL who manages the PV Reliability and Systems Engineering Group. "Even so, with manufacturers feeling pressure to lower prices, it is essential that quality be maintained and assured. The new guidelines help to ensure that quality is not compromised for lower priced modules and make it easier for PV customers to assess the expected quality."

NREL has worked with industry partners in the United States, such as SunPower and First Solar, and international colleagues in Japan, Europe and China, to develop PV-specific quality management standards to supplement the existing ISO-9001 in the application of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard 61215.

 

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC. For more information, please visit www.nrel.gov.