Quality Standards now Updated

The Lighting Global team has updated the Quality Standards to encourage the production of higher quality and safer products to better protect consumers. These updates include improvements to the lumen maintenance criteria, inclusion of a battery durability test, a ban on batteries containing cadmium or mercury, a requirement that all PV modules be protected from water ingress and an increase in the warranty term to one year.
In response to stakeholder feedback and market trends, the team has also decided to transition away from a public emphasis on Performance Targets and instead move toward a system where consumers can compare products based on advertised performance metrics. The details of a reporting framework for the performance metrics will be determined through an upcoming stakeholder process.
The revised Quality Standards and program decisions related to the Recommended Performance Targets are summarized in this memo: Revision of Quality Standards and Performance Targets for Lighting Global, Lighting Africa and Lighting Asia . The memo also includes a list of stakeholder comments with public responses from the Lighting Global team.
Updates to the Quality Standards will become effective January 1st, 2014. We anticipate starting the stakeholder process to refine a framework for reporting performance in November of 2013.
Thanks to all who participated in the stakeholder outreach through the webinar or online survey between June 10th and August 23rd; your informative feedback was essential to making informed and effective program decisions. Details on this and future stakeholder processes may be found on the Lighting Global website stakeholder page.
We are also announcing the results of another stakeholder process which involved updating the Standardized Specifications Sheets (SSS). We originally planned to announce the final updates to the SSS this past June; however, as some aspects of the SSS were dependent on the revisions to the Standards and Targets, we wanted to first finalize the updates to the Standards and Targets before releasing the new SSS format and policy.
Updates to the SSS, the new SSS policy and responses to stakeholder comments are detailed in this memo. Additionally, we have released the new Lighting Global SSS Guidelines that reflects the updates to the policy and format. Key updates include a new 2-page format for all SSS and a policy change which requires any product included on the Lighting Global/Africa/Asia webpages to have a publicly accessible SSS. These changes will become effective at the end of the grace period, November 15, 2013.
As many of you may have noted, the new Lighting Global website has now been up and running for several months. The Lighting Global website will house information and documents relevant to the region-specific lighting programs, Lighting Africa and Lighting Asia. The website is now the sole repository for standardized specifications sheets (SSS), verification letters and detailed information about the quality assurance (QA)program. The website also maintains the Technical and Eco-Design Notes, informative Lighting Global policy documents and a library of information related to environmental sustainability in the off-grid lighting market.
An additional update released on the Lighting Global website last week was the announcement of a discount offered on select IEC documents related to rural electrification. Available documents include IEC/TS 62257-9-5, the Technical Specification which institutionalizes the Lighting Global quality assurance framework and details testing protocols. For details on this offer and to see if you qualify for the discounts, visit the IEC Webstore.