MNRE Releases Guidelines for Series Approval of Solar PV Inverters for Testing

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has announced that it has released guidelines for series approval of solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters for conducting testing in labs

The guidelines are intended to enable test labs to approve the product family comprising change in design and materials for the solar inverters for their compulsory registration with Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and for the implementation of the Solar Photovoltaics Systems Order.

The guidelines are valid for solar PV-based off grid, grid-tied and hybrid inverters of capacities up to 150 Kilowatt, the ministry said in a notification.

Under the guidelines, the manufacturer will submit a declaration about the series of the product while submitting the samples for testing. Of the range of models to be covered under registration, the highest rated model will be tested to cover the entire range of family.

The lab will be required to charge the cost of testing only for the highest-rated inverter size model and the product label of each series model will be placed in the test report. If there is a change in construction, material or components in the family then the product will be submitted to test labs for fresh testing.

Under the guidelines, products with different hardware architecture and firmware functionality will be tested separately and all the models under one family will have same rated input and output voltage, same frequency and number of phases at output.

Inverters having PV voltages rated greater than 1,000 Volt dc and greater than 415 Volt ac are not covered in the guidelines.