Prices of PV products from China are very favorable, but sometimes performance, quality and lifetime are not meeting expectations. To set a common base for quality several standards (e.g., IEC 61215/61646/61730, UL 1703) have been established. Meanwhile, also tests beyond these IEC standards are carried out by several institutions. PI-Berlin (www.pi-berlin.com) is one of the few officially accredited testing institutes for all IEC/EN/ISO/UL standards and also carries out quality and performance tests beyond IEC standards (e.g. for bankability).
To push quality one step further, PI-Berlin took a look at the products in fact delivered the final customer: Quality of test samples is often different from samples from actual mass production. Labs and certification bodies control for such a misuses of certificates (e.g. via annual factory inspections), but delay time to identify and disapprove certification is substantial and regularly happens only when a product fails at the end user.
Therefore, PI-Berlin takes a step ahead and checks products before delivery – already at the production site. To do that, PI-Berlin is founding PI-China together with a Chinese Partner. PI-China is taking samples, checks quality standards and carries out frequent factory inspections. Only instantly checked deliveries and factories shall receive the PI-Cert quality label, to make sure that the buyer (such as system integrators) may apply the products directly from the port without further quality tests.
Costs for a useful quality package are available for one percent of module costs. Entire PV systems will be tested and certified also, starting in 2012, says Stefan Krauter, member of the board of directors of PI.
