Generally, standards are requirements or recommendations based on best practices and are created by bringing together the experience and expertise of diverse groups of interested parties – the manufacturers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators of a particular material, product, process or service.

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), ASTM International (originally known as the American Society for Testing and Materials) and Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) all publish standards for photovoltaic (PV) products.

The Solar ABCs work will mainly cover standards on PV products, including PV modules, balance of system (BOS) components, and both the stand-alone and grid connected PV systems. These standards primarily deal with PV product performance, reliability and safety.

In the Standards Section of this Web site, you can learn about:

• Solar ABCs partners’ work on proposed changes to existing standards and proposed new standards including information on how you can provide input and comments;
• Studies of issues important to PV standard development.

Each organization has its own process to develop and publish standards.

• UL Standards for Safety can be purchased from http://www.comm-2000.com
• IEC standards can be purchased from http://webstore.iec.ch/
• IEEE standards can be purchased from http://www.ieee.org
• ASTM standards can be purchased from http://www.astm.org