RE Equipment Standards and Ratings [RE-wrenches]

[John Raynes]

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>
>Hi all,
>
>Er, what about the international community - there is life outside the U.S. as
>well. Any standards for consideration have to be international in 
>scope.  That adds
>another dimension to the equation.
>
>                             regards,                John V

Very good point, which I neglected to mention. (I figured I'd already gone 
on too long.)  It all depends on how an interested group wants to proceed.

Most well-written and important national standards eventually become 
international standards, and they're modified during the process to 
accommodate the special needs of different nations.  For electrical 
products, this is normally through the International Electrotechnical 
Commission, or IEC.   As you might expect,  the broader in scope, the more 
bureaucratic the process, and the longer it takes for anything to come out 
the other end.  I worked on an IEC standard for the medical industry about 
10 years ago, and the process usually takes at least 3-5 years for a new 
standard.  The flip side is, an IEC standard would likely carry a lot of 
weight and be very effective.

I would guess that most wrenches who are interested in this want to see 
some useful draft standards sooner than that, and they also want to have 
their say in what the standard looks like.  In working with IEC, all our 
input would typically be channeled through a single designated country 
representative - influence gets pretty far removed.   I bet even an IEEE 
process would be too tedious for many of us.  IEEE is based in the US, but 
does represent electrical engineers worldwide.

Nothing wrong with an interested group such the wrenches starting small, 
then expanding scope as the effort picks up steam.  That's the way that a 
great number of standards get launched -  the people willing to put in the 
hard work get to call a lot of the early shots, like CEC.  Gotta start 
somewhere!

Is there an international solar energy organization that would be willing 
to get involved in performance standards writing?  That would be a way to 
keep the initial effort closer to home, but still have an more 
international view of things from the outset.

John Raynes
RE Solar

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