TUV Rheinland’s solar photovoltaic testing laboratory located in Bengaluru has been recognized by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) under the Compulsory Registration Scheme (CRS) to conduct testing of power converters and interconnected PV inverters.

The BIS recognition enables PV manufactures to comply with the quality standard requirements mandated by the government to introduce safer products to India’s consumers.

According to Thomas Fuhrmann, managing director of TUV Rheinland India, the company’s laboratory in Bengaluru can test equipment with a rating of up to 100 kW.

“As a global testing, inspection, certification provider, we support the cause of safer products to the consumers in India. We are proud to be associated with BIS and help them in their objective to provide safe, reliable, and quality goods, thereby minimizing health hazards to the consumers,” he said.

Power converters and interconnected PV inverters will be tested according to IS 16221 and safety requirements, according to IS 16169.

Inverter manufacturers have struggled to gain clarity regarding the ambiguous BIS certification process. The unavailability of labs, lack of testing facilities and workforce, unreasonable costs of testing, absence of series guidelines, and confusion regarding MNRE notifications were some of the issues that have made the compliance of the order “Solar Photovoltaics Systems, Devices and Component Goods Order 2017” order extremely difficult. Through several interviews with inverter suppliers, Mercom found out that the cost of BIS certification is also a cause of concern for the inverter suppliers apart from the time-taking process.

Realizing the need for quality products to be used in the rapidly expanding solar projects, the government had mandated that labs must conduct the tests for compulsory registration with the BIS for the implementation of the quality order. Since the notification was released on September 5, 2017, the deadline has been extended several times as the industry has been seeking more and more time for the compliance of the order due to a lack of lab facilities.

Recently, Mercom reported that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) issued a notification that stated that the deadline for the self-certification of solar inverters had been extended by another six months from December 31, 2019, to June 30, 2020.

Back in 2018, in an interview with Mercom, Joerg Althaus of TUV Rheinland discussed the issues related to the quality control order and the widespread lack of suitable laboratories. Read the interview here.

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