Why use standards
Following common practices on manufacturing, calibrating and using test equipment, as specified by national and international Standards Organizations allows easier intercomparison of measurement results performed in different laboratories. Abet Technologies’ systems are constructed to allow standards compliant metrology.
The following is a sampling of the standards, current as of the publication date of this catalog. These are the standards we refer to when specifying that our products are standards compliant:
- ASTM E927-10 Standard Specification for Solar Simulation for Photovoltaic Testing
- ASTM E948-09 Standard Test Method for Electrical Performance of Photovoltaic Cells Using Reference Cells Under Simulated Sunlight
- ASTM E973-10 Standard Test Method for Determination of the Spectral Mismatch Parameter Between a Photovoltaic Device and a Photovoltaic Reference Cell
- ASTM E1021-12 Standard Test Method for Spectral Responsivity Measurements of Photovoltaic Devices
- ASTM E1143-05 (Reapproved 2010) Standard Test Method for Determining the Linearity of a Photovoltaic Device Parameter with Respect To a Test Parameter
- ASTM E1362-10 Standard Test Method for Calibration of Non-Concentrator Photovoltaic Secondary Reference Cells
- ASTM G138-12 Standard Test Method for Calibration of a Spectroradiometer Using a Standard Source of Irradiance
- ASTM G177-03 (Reapproved 2112) Standard Tables for Reference Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Distributions: Hemispherical on 37° Tilted Surface
- IEC 68091 Ed. 2.0 (2009-12) Standard Photovoltaic devices – Procedures for temperature and irradiance corrections to measured I-V characteristics
- IEC 60904-1 Ed. 2.0 (2006-09) Measurement of photovoltaic current-voltage characteristics
- IEC 60904-2 Ed. 2.0 (2007-03) Requirements for reference solar devices
- IEC 60904-3 Ed. 2.0 (2008-04) Measurement principles for terrestrial photovoltaic (PV) solar devices with reference spectral irradiance data
- IEC 60904-4 Ed. 2.0 (2007-03) Reference solar devices – Procedures for establishing calibration traceability
- IEC 60904-7 Ed. 3.0 (2008-11) Computation of the spectral mismatch correction for measurements of photovoltaic devices
- IEC 60904-8 Ed. 2.0 (1998-02) Measurement of spectral response of a photovoltaic (PV) device
- IEC 60904-9 Ed. 2.0 (2007-10) Solar simulator performance requirements
- JIS C 8912 (1998) through Amendment 2 (2011) Solar simulators for crystalline solar cells and modules
- JIS C 8913 (1998) Measuring method of output power for crystalline solar cells
Solar Simulator standards
The currently applicable standards are quite similar but not identical. The ASTM, IEC and JIS requirements for different solar simulator classifications are as follows:
All Abet Solar Simulators are shipped with a Certificate attesting it has been tested to and meets or exceeds all applicable class standards.