Photovoltaic Industry Shifts Toward Safety-Driven Competition as Fire-Prevention Standard Debuts

At the 2026 SNEC Expo, the photovoltaic (PV) industry is undergoing a clear shift in competitive logic—from cost and efficiency competition to a new stage driven by safety and reliability.

Leading companies are no longer focusing solely on module power and price, but are increasingly highlighting performance in high-risk application scenarios such as industrial rooftops, data centers, and residential installations. Among various safety indicators, fire prevention has emerged as a key industry focus, with major players including LONGi Green Energy and AIKO Solar introducing fire-resistant modules.

However, the lack of a unified evaluation framework has made it difficult for customers to compare “safety claims” across products.

This gap was addressed on June 4, when TÜV Rheinland, together with LONGi, AIKO, TCL Zhonghuan, and Grand Sunergy, jointly released the Technical Specification for Fire-Prevention PV Module Evaluation. The document is the industry’s first systematic standard focused on PV module fire safety, providing a quantifiable and verifiable benchmark for global applications.

Existing Standards Fail to Address Internal Fire Risks

According to industry data, PV fire incidents have continued to rise in recent years, while existing standards such as UL 790 and IEC 61730 mainly assess external flame spread rather than internal fire initiation.

Experts note that most PV fires originate from internal failures such as hotspots, diode faults, or soldering issues, which can lead to extreme temperatures and eventual DC arc ignition.

“The key gap in existing standards is that they do not evaluate whether a module can prevent ignition from within,” said TÜV Rheinland CTO Dr. Gao Qi.

New Standard Focuses on “Fire Prevention, Not Fire Spread”

The newly released specification introduces a fundamentally different testing logic: instead of testing new modules under external fire conditions, it simulates long-term aging before applying extreme electrical and thermal stress to replicate real-world failure pathways.

Evaluation is based on a graded system rather than pass/fail, including indicators such as hotspot temperature, arc initiation time, and electrical degradation behavior.

This allows safety performance to be quantified and compared, enabling system designers to match modules with protection systems more precisely.

Toward a Safety-Driven Industry Transformation

Industry experts believe the new standard fills a critical gap in PV safety evaluation and could reshape market competition.

By enabling fire safety to become measurable and certifiable, the specification is expected to support broader adoption in high-safety-demand sectors such as data centers, battery factories, and industrial facilities.

More importantly, it signals a broader industry transition: from a long-standing focus on cost per watt toward a new value system centered on safety, reliability, and lifecycle risk control.

TÜV Rheinland stated that the standard will be further expanded across the PV value chain, including inverters, connectors, and system-level integration, to build a comprehensive safety evaluation framework for the global solar industry.