The Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has issued draft guidelines for the series approval of solar PV modules. These guidelines will facilitate labs and manufacturers develop series of products for product family, including those with design or material changes, for performance testing and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) registration.
Modules will need to meet these standards under the Solar Systems, Devices and Components Goods Order, 2025, says the ministry. These series guidelines will now govern module testing in authorized labs.
The guidelines define a product family by the highest configuration of components and subassemblies, along with an explanation of how various models are derived from it. Models within a product family generally share common design, construction, and key components to ensure compliance with relevant standards.
To qualify multiple power bins under the IEC TS 62915 limits, at least 2 modules each from the lower, median and higher classes will be tested. If the median class is unavailable, then the next higher class will be tested. Extending the qualification of a single power class to additional bins will also require 2 modules each from all the power classes to be tested for label verification. If the extension is only toward higher or lower bins, then modules from that specific range must be used to verify rated label values.
The guidelines require hysteresis loss to be kept below 0.5% as per IEC 60904-1:2020 for IV measurements of high-capacitance modules. Exceeding this limit will require a detailed report of parameters such as dI/dt and dV/dt for IPmax and VPmax, errcap, etc.
Further, as per the draft guidelines 12 modules must be randomly selected from production batches as per IS 14286 that have been fully manufactured using specified materials, follow approved designs and processes. These should have passed standard quality checks at the end of the manufacturer and have a tolerance of up to ±3%.
For safety testing, a minimum of 10 modules are and 2 unframes modules will be required. To prove reduction of pollution degree to PD 1, an additional module is required. The documents states that for glass/glass constructions 20 additional samples according to 10.25.2 are required for the lap shear strength test (MST 36) to prove cemented joints. All modules must be technically identical.
Retesting will be a must in case of any changes in the PV module design or manufacturing process as per IS/IEC 62915:2023. Such changes may require a repetition of some or all of the qualification tests to retain type and safety approval.
If there is a change in BOM in the family then the retesting guidelines will be followed for submitting samples to test Labs, and for which appropriate testing charges will be made by test lab, according to the draft.
The ministry published the draft guidelines on May 27, 2025 for which it will accept public comments within the next 15 days, till June 11, 2025.
