Minor Updates to the Quality Standards
The Lighting Global Quality Assurance team has made some additional updates to the Quality Standards for Pico-PV and the Quality Standards for SHS Kits. These updates do not represent a change in Lighting Global practices, but are only meant to clarify and officially document existing practices. The revised version of the Standards are available here and the updates are described below.
- 1. Clarify the performance reporting requirements.
- 2. Include the requirements for Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) products. These requirements were previously announced and implemented in December 2015.
- 3. Provide information regarding which standards apply to auxiliary appliances, such as radios, torches and fans that are included with the main product. This includes specifying that auxiliary appliances which have a rated light output of less than 15 lumens are not subject to photometric tests, such as lumen maintenance, light output, and light distribution. Additionally, the revised Quality Standards state that some quality and durability requirements may be waived for non-lighting appliances that can be proven to meet other relevant standards, such as IEC 60065 (for TVs and radios) and IEC 60335 (for fans). This new policy has been in place since January 2016, but has not yet been formally announced. For portable non-lighting appliances which do not carry other relevant certifications, a modified drop test is described.
- 4. Present a new option for meeting the lumen maintenance standard: If the most recent product submitted by a company met the lumen maintenance standard because all 6 samples maintained ≥ 95% of initial light output at 1,000 hours, the company is eligible to use a new expedited method. The expedited method includes a 500-hour lumen maintenance test and single point temperature measurements of the LED array. The temperature measurements are compared to IESNA LM80-08 data from the LED manufacturer to determine the lumen maintenance at 2000 hours. The test is described in T.6 of the Lighting Global Solar Home System Kit Quality Assurance Protocols and will be outlined in Annex J of an upcoming revision to IEC/TS 62257-9-5.