The Renewable Energy Testing Center (RETC), an independent engineering and certification testing laboratory located in California, has released the "2025 Photovoltaic Module Index Report," which tests the reliability, performance, and quality of solar panels.

This year, RETC commended 21 component manufacturers for their outstanding achievements in 14 testing stages. In addition, RETC has identified 12 manufacturers that meet its "highest achievement" recognition criteria. These 12 manufacturers are: Chint Solar DASolar、 Dongci Energy, JA Solar, Jinko Solar, Longi Corporation, Runneng Energy SolarSpace、 Tianhe Solar, VSUN, Waaree, and Yingli Solar.

To be awarded the title of 'Overall Highest Achiever', manufacturers must successfully complete RETC's rigorous Thresher testing program and achieve excellent results in multiple reliability and performance tests. Manufacturers must also demonstrate a commitment to quality control and assurance, allowing independent third parties to randomly select photovoltaic modules from inventory for Thresher testing.

RETC has reserved the 'Overall Highest Achievement Award' for Bill of Materials (BOM) manufacturers who excel in three interrelated and equally important areas: module reliability, performance, and quality. The RETC award is one level lower than this highest honor and aims to recognize product manufacturers who have performed outstandingly in multiple testing sequences in a specific field, awarding them the "Reliability Excellence Achievement Award" or "Performance Excellence Achievement Award".

The 2025 report found an increase in issues related to humidity, thermal cycling, PID, and metastability. RETC also discovered structural issues, such as component frames and glass malfunctioning during mechanical loading.

Cherif Kedir, CEO of RETC, said, "Although some of the recent funding test results are concerning, these issues have also been successfully eradicated by the technical due diligence community in the past or can be resolved by improving testing standards. As long as we observe carefully, we can solve these problems