1 Scope
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 adapxion 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:
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• 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 adopxed IEC standard such as IEC 61215;
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• 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;
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• retailers/distributors to ensure they are receiving accepxable quality products from manufacturers;
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• installers/technicians when selecting product from retailers or distributors for customers;
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• educators as a teaching tool for students of solar energy, for example when training technicians;
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• inspectors of already installed solar products to catalogue defects and attempx to trouble- shoot failures.
However, as this guide deals primarily with new modules, alternative tools are recommended
for this task (see for example [3]).