Utah Law Sparks UL Safety Standard Development
The measure’s sponsor claimed that Utah’s passage of a plug-in solar law last year has led the safety certification group UL to start working on a safety standard for the equipment. Plug-in solar producers who talk to UL will also help UL make progress. A co-founder of a group claimed that lawmakers in twenty-two states are talking about laws around plug-in solar.
Raymond Ward, a Utah State Representative who wrote the state’s plug-in solar bill, said that UL, the organization that certifies safety, understands “they’re going to have to” make a standard for plug-in solar. Ward spoke on a webinar put out by the charity organizations Bright Saver and Solar United Neighbors.
Safety Certification Requirements
Ward’s argument begins with the fact that Utah law says that a plug-in solar device must be certified by “Underwriters Laboratories or an equivalent nationally recognized testing laboratory” and also fulfill National Electrical Code criteria.
Ward added that UL is “careful to do their job carefully” and that they were “waiting to see if anyone was going to push on” the issue of plug-in solar.
He stated that Utah’s statute mentioning UL certification has attracted “friends to UL,” which is usually how UL acts: when an industry comes to UL and says, “We have a product, we want to sell it.” UL, please help us set a safety standard so we can market it. Ward also said that some businesses were ready to start selling plug-in solar in Utah.
He stated that “every single one” of the firms that offer plug-in solar in Germany also wants to sell it in the US. So all we have to do is make friends along the way and look forward to all the other fantastic things that will happen because of that.
A UL Solutions spokesman explained that one part of UL, called UL Solutions, may certify a plug-in solar system to its UL 3700 “outline of investigation.” However, another part of UL, called UL Standards & Engagement, has not yet made a UL standard for plug-in solar. A procedure based on consensus among stakeholders would lead to such a standard.
The Clean Energy States Alliance, a non-profit group, has written a guideline for state-level legislators that lists the safety issues that plug-in solar systems should be aware of.
Twenty-Two States
Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, claimed during the webinar that “22 states are moving” plug-in solar laws. She thought that as more states made the technology legal, the price of plug-in systems would drop a lot, as indicated in a Bright Saver white paper.
Other Labs That Do Testing
Stryker came up in favor of Utah’s legislation that says plug-in solar systems must be certified by UL or another nationally recognized testing facility. She said, “We want new technical answers to the safety questions to be allowed as time goes on, without having to pass new laws.”
The website of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mentions 22 nationally approved testing labs, one of which is UL Solutions.
Utility Didn’t Say No
Ward, a Utah State Representative, stated that the state’s plug-in solar bill passed unanimously because some engineers from the state’s major utility, Rocky Mountain Power, helped
“Craft the language in such a way that they wouldn’t oppose it. They didn’t support it; they simply didn’t care. And all we needed was for them not to be against it.”
Ward added,
“It’s been so great seeing so many other places look at that and say, ‘Oh, hey, we could do that too, and we want to do that too.'”
