ISOFOTÓN announced that LCIE Bureau Veritas, an organization accredited by COFRAC (the French board of Accreditation), audited ISOFOTON's cell and module production lines in May to certify that ISOFOTONs solar products are fully European-made. This announcement was made during Intersolar, the major global solar event held in Munich (Germany) from June 19-21. ISOFOTÓN is one of the first companies worldwide to obtain this quality certification, which was established by a French decree in January 2013.
During the auditing process, it was verified that the company is correctly tracking its raw materials with the serial numbers of the modules. The manufacturing process to transform the silicon wafers inside the solar cells is done in-house. And ISOFOTÓN uses its own cells in the assembly of its modules, meaning the entire module production process takes place in the Malaga, Spain facility.
In addition, the auditing process confirms that ISOFOTÓN solar cells and modules production processes comply with the most rigorous quality management system worldwide. Luis López, Quality and Customer Support Director at ISOFOTÓN, remarked that "this certification reinforces our leading position in the industry confirming that we are compliant with the highest quality Standards".
This certification strengthens ISOFOTÓN's Position in Europe. It reinforces its business in one of its key markets (France), allowing ISOFOTÓN's modules produced in its Málaga based factory to comply with current 10% feed-in-tariff approved by French government last January. France is one of the greatest potential markets for PV industry, and it is expected to install 2GW by the end of 2013 compared to the 1,2 GW installed on 2012.
During Intersolar 2013, ISOFOTON also announced a major improvement in its modules quality. During the last years, the number of warranty claims has been reduced significantly up to less than 0,01% in 2010 after the new ISF modules were launched by the company.
Following the latest trends in the sector, ISOFOTON will develop in the forthcoming months a new system to support a self- supply energy model compliant with the current regulation approved in Germany in May 2013. This new system can be connected into the grid. It includes the ISF-250 module model, an inverter and a battery connected and it will ensure an efficient use of energy production: the news system will storage the energy surplus not used initially so it can be used in the future when needed.
This new product is being developed after Germany approved – on May 2013- a regulation that supports the development of this new system through the German development bank KfW Group. This bank provides a 600/KW grant for the new PV systems and 660/KW grant for older systems. To be qualified for those grants, the PV system has to be located in Germany and it has to be used at least for 5 years. No more than 60% of the installed power can be fed to the grid. The batteries include a 5 year warranty.
ISOFOTÓN, which is present in 60 countries and has developed nearly 1000 projects, is one of the companies with the highest volume in R&D activity in the European photovoltaic sector. It has 1,500MW of projects in the pipeline for the next two years.
