Call for comments on draft Test Methods and Quality Standards for Solar Home System Kits

Lighting Global and the regional Lighting Africa, Lighting Asia, and Lighting Pacific programs are in the process of extending support to larger (10W to 100W) solar home system kits in response to consumer and industry demands.
We are now releasing our draft Test Methods for SHS kits for stakeholder review. These methods are similar to those for pico products, but include some modifications and new methods, such as an assessment of USB and other ports on the products. We have used lessons learned from pilot testing and feedback from the respective participating companies to inform the development of the draft Test Methods, but would now appreciate broader stakeholder feedback. After incorporating your feedback, we intend to submit these draft Test Methods to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in November 2015.
We have also revised the Lighting Global Quality Standards for SHS kits based on feedback from our previous round of stakeholder review and lessons learned during pilot testing. Both the revised Quality Standards and draft Test Methods were developed by a team of researchers from Lighting Global QA and Fraunhofer ISE with funding from the World Bank and Global LEAP. We are interested in your feedback on both documents.
The engagement process:

• Review the draft Test Methods and/or revised Quality Standards Note, these are two separate documents.
• Additionally, we have just released a short guide to the draft SHS Kit Test Methods which describes the differences between the SHS Kit Test Methods and IEC/TS 62257-9-5 (the existing test methods for pico-products).
• After reviewing the draft Test Methods and/or revised Quality Standards, provide comments through this online form. To enable you to prepare responses in advance of filling out the online form, the questions are listed in this document, however, all comments must be submitted through the online form.

 
Comments must be received by Friday, September 25th in order for them to be considered for inclusion in our submission to the IEC. Please note that it will take time for the document to move through the IEC process. Comments received after September 25 may still be considered, but it is unlikely that they will be incorporated into the initial draft of the methods that are submitted to the IEC.
If you are interested in receiving email updates regarding this stakeholder process and our expansion into solar home system kits, please sign up: Email sign-up
If you have questions on the solar home system framework, please contact shs@chief-lighting-global.clientapp.com.