Underwriters Laboratories (UL) has achieved IEC 62109-1 and 62109-2 Certified Body Testing Laboratory (CBTL) status for inverter products.
With this internationally recognized testing accreditation, UL can provide internationally accepted market access reports, known as a Certification Body (CB) report, to inverter manufacturers. The inverter can be evaluated to the standard for the United States and/or another market(s) in one project.
The UL Mark can then be applied to the certified product and sold in the United States and/or a CB report created and provided for product sold into international markets. UL will provide both the necessary safety testing and/or testing for grid interconnections to specified national requirements.
Some of the most noteworthy benefits of harmonized international standard adoption include:
Having one base-certification document (addressing known national differences is easier than different national standards)
- Reduced engineering time (to prepare for certifications)
- Reduced certification time
- Reduced certification costs
- Reduced time to market.
The overall standards harmonization process was a collaborative effort with industry. The U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) is the managing body for determining which international standards will be adopted into the U.S. market. The US TAG convened an international harmonization committee (IHC) to develop the initial draft of UL62109-1.
This draft was concurrently provided to the UL1741 Standards Technical Panel (STP), which manages the US standard for safety for inverters for the US domestic marketplace, for parallel consideration. Because of the significant involvement of the IHC members in collaboration with the UL 1741 STP, consensus and a positive vote is highly anticipated with publication of the harmonized U.S. standard expected in the second quarter.
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