Photon International magazine estimates that one in four pv modules sold in Europe this year will be manufactured in China.  The question for pv power developers is how good are these modules?  Chinese manufacturers are predicting they will produce 1.15GW of solar modules this year--over 25% of the total 4GW of global production.

When I was at Intersolar in June, I met with over 30 Chinese module manufacturers, many who did not have their UL 1703 listing yet.  The focus is on Europe--Germany and Spain, to be exact--California is a distant third, but one that everyone is watching.  And they are getting their UL listing--there will be a lot of these modules when I go to Solar Power 2007 in Long Beach.

My major concerns are performance based--I design and provision 25 year systems.  The key factor is not initial $/W, but the module's electrical production over its lifetime.

The IEC 61215 certification seems to be the minimum standard, with the UL 1703 necessary for our California market.  I need to get my head around this, because it is a potentially useful component to the systems I design.