All microgeneration products and their installations are subject to legal requirements – for example the Health and Safety at Work Act, The Gas Safety Regulations, The Electricity at Work Act, The Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations, Building Regulations, Planning legislation and Trading Standards requirements for consumer goods. The latter requires that most products are “CE” marked, which in turn requires that they are tested and approved to the requirements of any applicable European Directives, and related European Norms.

Installers of gas appliances almost exclusively require CORGI registration, and anything other than minor electrical works can only be carried out by a competent person registered under Part P of the Building Regulations.

In addition, a number of the schemes backed by government that promote or subsidise energy efficiency or small scale renewables overlay their own, additional requirements, both for products (often related to performance) and to installers.

This results in a complex web of requirements and, as new technologies continue to be developed in what is a new and ground-breaking industry, new products are often left with significant challenges in obtaining necessary appropriate safety and performance accreditations. In many cases, it is necessary to seek separate accreditation for each product installed. This latter requirement is not workable in a mass market context, either for the companies commercialising the products, or indeed for the accreditation providers.

Some work has already taken place to try to streamline the accreditation and type approval processes for some microgeneration technologies. Of these, work on microCHP is probably the most advanced, with a BSI-sponsored expert group close to consulting on a Publicly Available Specification, and separately DEFRA has commissioned work to develop a Seasonal Performance Index suitable for integration into the Standard Assessment Procedure and the evaluation process for the Energy Efficiency Commitment. Both Clear Skies and PV Demonstration programmes, now replaced by the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, have developed their own accreditation approaches for other microgeneration technologies, although the requirements can vary significantly from one technology to another, and even within technology groups. The British Wind Energy Association has started to work on updates to relevant British Standards to incorporate microwind, and the Renewable Power Association is hosting a number of accreditation workshops funded by the DTI to try to establish an holistic picture of all the activity currently taking place on accreditation & type approvals, and identify where there are overlaps or gaps.

We support the emerging conclusions from the workshops recently conducted by the DTI and Renewable Power Association – that an accreditation scheme should be established against which individual sector type approvals can be benchmarked. This should be a self regulated industry body consisting of a review panel to establish a code against which new type approved standards put forward by individual industry sectors can be measured. This will provide the necessary confidence to consumers, regulators and government that each industry sector’s products and installers are meeting a consistent industry standard of safety and performance. The set up and implementation of this should be brought under the existing government work programme on microgeneration.

The development of each product category’s technical product is best handled by proper engagement of the companies developing those technologies. In some cases the individual sector trade associations will be best placed to handle this, in other cases organisations like the IEC, CEN and BSI will be best placed to do so. Whichever route is considered to be most appropriate in each case, there is a strong case for the government providing funding for sector experts to develop appropriate product and installation standards for each technology.