Services Solar Quality Assurance

The Institute for Building Technology Safety (IBTS) is a leading provider of Investment Grade Quality Assurance services to public and private sector clients for the past 35 years. As a nonprofit organization, it is our goal to provide Quality Assurance services to our private and government partners to ensure reliability, production and safety of installed systems, increase local jurisdiction and utility responsiveness, and provide overall support to enhance the renewable energy industry growth.

With a national footprint, IBTS can be your partner to ensure quality installation, code compliance, and evaluate performance metrics such as equipment and workmanship quality, conformance to design criteria, code compliance and system shading. IBTS has a team of highly trained field inspectors utilizing advanced, tablet-based inspection technology to ensure data accuracy and quality reporting. IBTS performs field inspections for residential, commercial and utility scale Solar PV systems.

Leasing Providers and Utilities - Why Third Party Quality Assurance?

IBTS' goal is to allow solar companies to operate nationally without the expense and risk associated with building a national quality assurance infrastructure. IBTS is ready to be your one stop for reliable national Quality Assurance from an established non-profit public benefit organization--providing the right balance between performance for your needs and continuous workforce development. IBTS is currently working with many of the top Solar Leasing providers in the country to providing quality assurance services.

Ensure that all contractors are maintaining a consistent level of quality and installing solar system that will perform as designed. IBTS instills confidence with investors that your quality is being verified and managed by an independent, third-party organization with decades of national quality assurance infrastructure.

• Quality Control Field Inspections - Let IBTS serve as your eyes and ears to verify installations meet best practices and code compliance. IBTS has developed a tablet based quality assurance tool that ensures data and photographs are collected accurately and reliably in the field and synchronized into a database allowing near real-time analysis. We can customize our field QC inspection to your companies' specific needs and requirements.
• Solar Installer Qualification - IBTS functions as an outsourced service to vet potential solar partners through on site visits to verify quality of work and safety. 
• Shade Analysis - IBTS functions as an outsourced service to vet potential solar partners through on site visits to verify quality of work and safety. 

Building Departments and Government Partners – Enhancing Economic Development and Renewable Energy in your Community

Each jurisdiction and utility has a responsibility to ensure code and interconnection compliance through design plan review and field inspection verification process. IBTS works with our partners to ensure the process is efficient and seamless to support the economic development and stability of the renewable energy industry. Local jurisdiction slow permitting, delayed field inspections, and lack of technical staff is one of the largest obstacles that unnecessarily increases the "soft costs" of Solar PV installations which in-turn stunts market growth. IBTS has the national infrastructure to support local jurisdictions in this process and enhance economic development for renewable energy.

• Field Inspection Services - IBTS can augment local jurisdiction/utility in field inspections services to enhance the jurisdiction and utility responsiveness to inspection requests. Code inspections include a 24-hour guaranteed turnaround time.
• Solar PV Plan Review - IBTS can provide a variety of outsourced plan review and engineering services. Our engineers currently function in this capacity for building departments across the country. Rather than building out your own internal capacity at great expense, leverage IBTS and achieve scale out of the box. IBTS guarantees a 5-day turnaround time on all Solar PV plan review services.

Learn more about how private or government can get more out of your Renewable Energy programs and Solar Quality Assurance in general; contact Christopher Doyle, Deputy Director for Energy Services, at 512-557-5186.

Related Articles:  

National Quality Assurance Standard: A Bright Idea for the Solar PV Energy Market - This article examines the issue of securitization of distributed solar PV systems and how a National Quality Assurance Standard could be an ideal solution.

Strategies for Broadening Solar PV Implementation - This article examines the basic concepts of solar PV and strategies for supporting broader implementation focusing particularly on accelerating progress and efficiency in permitting and inspecting residential and small, commercial solar PV installations.

Quality – Achieving Assurances through Established Controls -  In this article, a Quality Management System is discussed.  The ability to incorporate the elements of Quality Assurance and Quality Control, can reduced risk and increase efficiency and identifies issues before they become problems. .  

Implementing an Investment Grade Solar Quality Assurance - An article regarding how the solar industry transitions into a mainstream industry selling services rather than hardware like panels and inverters, the need for quality assurance and standardized measurement has moved from a program requirement to a necessity.  

A Tipping Point for the Solar PV Market - This article examines the basic concepts of solar PV and strategies for supporting broader implementation focusing particularly on accelerating progress and efficiency in permitting and inspecting residential and small commercial Solar PV installations. It is based on IBTS's participation in the Solar Tech Summit as an industry expert and its knowledge of solar PV and building inspection processes. 

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