CFV Solar Test Laboratory

CFV Solar Test Laboratory, located in Albuquerque, NM, is a state-of-the-art photovoltaic (PV) test center, accredited to ISO17025. CFV is jointly owned by the world-renowned standards and research organizations: CSA Group, Fraunhofer ISE, and Fraunhofer CSE.

CSA Group is a global provider of product testing, certification and verification services for electronic, plumbing, gas-fired, mechanical and many other product areas. CSA Group includes CSA Standards, a leading North American standards development organization and OnSpeX, providing performance testing and other services to assist manufactures along the supply chain.

Product Certifications with CSA and VDE:

European and North American certification for CPV
Certifications for racking systems and trackers
CSA certification to ANSI/UL 1703
VDE certification to IEC standards 61730 and 61215

Advanced Performance Testing:

Tests for CEC Listing
IEC 61853 Matrix
.pan File Generation
Sandia Performance Coefficients
Warranty Testing
Quality Control for Power Plants

CFV provides product certification testing and non-certification testing services for flat-plate (c-Si), thin-film, building integrated (BIPV) and concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) modules.

Global product certification is easy with CFV. Its international partners VDE and CSA help CFV bridge the gap between PV certification standards in America, Europe and Asia. CFV provides combined test programs that fulfill the requirements of ANSI/UL, IEC and SCC/CSA.

CFV is accredited by A2LA (an ILAC member) as an IEC/ISO 17025 test laboratory. It is listed by the California Energy Commission (CEC) and additionally accredited by CSA Group and VDE Institute as a certified sub-contractor within their respective TDAP, CBTL and NRTL schemes.

CFV also provides test services well beyond certification; such as performance measurements and energy ratings, quality assurance test programs to verify the performance of modules, reliability testing to support bankability, comparative studies to select the best product or technology for a given task, and more.

Indoor Measurement Equipment:

• Class AAA+ rated flash simulator
• Module sizes up to 2.1m x 1.4m
• Climate controlled environment
• Integrated temperature chamber for precise performance measurements at different temperatures
• Variable irradiance from 100 to 1100 W/m2
• Variable light pulse from 20 to 50ms
• Ability to test high capacitance modules
• PTB primary reference cells with low uncertainty
• QC-program with round-robin testing with Fraunhofer ISE, CalLab and Fraunhofer CSE
• Low measurement uncertainty
• Electroluminescence and infra-red imaging capability

Measurement Services:

• Performance at STC, NOCT and low irradiance
• Temperature coefficient determination
• Performance and Energy Rating per IEC 61853
• Name plate verification for power plants
• Measurement of thin-film modules
• Spectral mismatch calculation and correction
• Measurement of high-capacitive modules with long flash times or sectional I-V curves
• Dark-IV measurements
• Performance comparison indoor versus outdoor
• Input data verification for performance models (PVSyst, SAM, Sandia, etc.)
• California Energy Commission (CEC) measurements
• Custom performance measurements, statistical evaluation and failure analysis