PD IEC PAS 62257-10:2017

This standard PD IEC PAS 62257-10:2017 Recommendations for renewable energy and hybrid systems for rural electrification is classified in these ICS categories:

• 27.160 Solar energy engineering

This document is designed to be used as a guide to visually inspect front-contact poly-crystalline and mono-crystalline silicon solar photovoltaic (PV) modules for major defects (less common types of PV modules such as back-contact silicon cells or thin film technologies are not covered herein). The modules under consideration may be of any size or rated power, however some specific use-cases for solar modules may have different requirements and therefore adaption of this document is application and institution dependent (ex. labelling may not be present for a solar module sold as part of a small off-grid lighting kit). This document is meant to supplement and support rather than replace international testing standards (for example IEC 61215 or UL 1703 [1], [2]). A lack of visually observable defects is necessary but not sufficient to determine if a module would pass IEC 61215 testing.

Several applications could be envisioned for this document, including use by:

• border agents to inspect product shipments at ports of entry to a country. Standardized rejection criteria could be used as grounds for barring defective products for import in conjunction with an adopted IEC standard such as IEC 61215;

• standards agencies or regulatory authorities in search and seizure efforts. A tool that can be used onsite to determine if defective or fraudulent products are found for sale in markets;

• retailers/distributors to ensure they are receiving acceptable quality products from manufacturers;

• installers/technicians when selecting product from retailers or distributors for customers;

• educators as a teaching tool for students of solar energy, for example when training technicians;

• inspectors of already installed solar products to catalogue defects and attempt to trouble-shoot failures.

However, as this guide deals primarily with new modules, alternative tools are recommended for this task (see for example [3]).