Solar Power World
By Kelly Pickerel | April 16, 2026
Solar panel testing lab Kiwa PVEL has updated its Product Qualification Program (PQP). The revisions address growing concern areas for the global solar industry, including the rise of field failures related to spontaneous glass breakage, frame structural failures and increasingly severe hail events.
“Across the industry, we continue to see increasing instances of spontaneous glass breakage in the field,” said Tristan Erion-Lorico, VP of sales and marketing at Kiwa PVEL. “As manufacturers have pushed toward larger modules and thinner materials, these sudden breakage events have made it clear that more rigorous and statistically meaningful testing is needed. Our updated PQP now uses higher sample sizes and test‑to‑failure methodologies to better assess module durability.”
Kiwa PVEL has introduced test‑to‑failure (TTF) protocols for both static mechanical load (SML) and hail testing to the PQP. The new SML-TTF complements the PQP’s existing mechanical stress sequences (MSS) by quantifying the dominant failure mode and achievable maximum load for each module design submitted for PQP testing. It also expands the test sample quantity to five additional SML-TTF samples, on top of the two MSS samples.
Kiwa PVEL
The Hail‑TTF protocol replaces the previous hail stress sequence (HSS) in the PQP. The updated hail test increases the sample size to five modules and focuses on impact locations in the areas most prone to breakage, such as edges, corners, and junction box regions. Hail‑TTF greatly improves repeatability and comparability across manufacturers and glass suppliers, by escalating hail diameters until failure occurs, providing buyers with more quantifiable breakage thresholds.
Kiwa PVEL has also updated its PQP sample production witness process to more systematically verify critical frame and glass dimensions in factories, further reducing uncertainty related to material and assembly variability.
As n‑type technologies become dominant in the PV market, testing labs have encountered increased measurement uncertainty driven by metastability mechanisms. Kiwa PVEL’s team spent the past years quantifying these effects and identified three distinct forms of metastability that can distort post‑test performance measurements:
To counter these effects, the updated PQP introduces final stabilization steps, including short doses of full‑spectrum light soaking and UV‑light soaking, after UVID, field exposure, damp heat and PID testing. These steps ensure that post‑test flash measurements more accurately reflect true module behavior in the field.
Several other refinements further enhance the PQP’s relevance for modern day modules:
“Regularly iterating on the PQP makes it the most relevant test plan for today’s module technologies and failure modes,” said Kevin Gibson, Managing Director at Kiwa PVEL. “These updates allow module manufacturers to better showcase product reliability and performance on their current offerings. The new PQP also ensures that solar buyers receive meaningful, statistically robust and actionable data.”
News item from Kiwa PVEL
Kelly Pickerel has more than 15 years of experience reporting on the U.S. solar industry and is currently editor in chief of Solar Power World. Email Kelly.

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