Photovoltaic Module Reliability

8Conformity Assessment and IECRE

Conformity Assessment refers to activities that are undertaken to determine that products, services, or even systems meet the requirements of their specification and/or relevant standards. You can see how important this would be for photovoltaics (PV) as they require huge upfront investments and then the economic return is based on them performing to specification for many years. Most of this book so far has detailed the types of extended accelerated testing and factory quality control necessary for PV modules to meet specifications and warranties. However, there are two additional requirements that must be met to achieve the type of conformity assessment needed in PV. These will be discussed in the next two sections. The first section discusses development of conformity assessment systems for PV products, in this case, mostly PV modules although some PV products like PV lanterns have also been covered. The second section discusses the extension of conformity assessment from the product to the PV system deployed in the field and how this required the creation of a whole new Conformity Assessment organization at the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

8.1 Module Conformity Assessment – PowerMark, IECQ, PVGAP, and IECEE

The simplest type of conformity assessment is for a specific product which in the case of PV includes the module. Clearly some sort of assurance that the modules meet their specifications and the requirements of ...