By Administrator A number of conference sessions and stakeholder meetings on solar certification drew full audiences at the Solar Energy 2001 Forum. On Tuesday afternoon, April 24, a conference session was held on solar certification. Jerry Ventre offered some basic definitions to help differentiate among the many elements of the certification issue. Certification is awarded to people, products, and processes by employers, independent agencies, and vendors. A License is awarded to people by government agencies.
Accreditation is awarded to learning programs and testing laboratories by non-government agencies.
And, Endorsements are awarded to people, products, and processes by any organization. Speaking on behalf of Sandia National Labs, Michael Quintana framed the issues at hand. Developing a widespread, grid-tied domestic market for photovoltaic systems requires consistent success in meeting customer expectations. This requires a greater level of practitioner and product certifications than is currently in effect. Michael emphasized that we need a strategy that represents the best tradeoffs between product quality, practitioner competency, simplicity, and cost.