As we celebrate World Standards Day, think about how much trust is involved in something as simple as switching on a light, charging a phone or plugging an appliance into a power point. Increasingly, that same trust extends to rooftop solar, home battery systems and electric vehicles charging in our garages. We expect these technologies to work. More importantly, we trust that they are safe.
Behind that everyday confidence is a relationship most consumers rarely see. Standards establish requirements for safety, performance and reliability. Manufacturers develop products against those requirements, while testing laboratories provide evidence that requirements have been met. But there is another critical part of that chain: accreditation provides confidence that the organisation producing those results has demonstrated the technical competence to do so.
For World Standards Day, NATA spoke with Sepideh Koohestani, a NATA Lead Assessor specialising in Electrotechnology accreditation and involved in standards committee work, to get an inside perspective on how standards evolve, what happens behind their development and where testing and accreditation fit into the picture.
From this technical perspective, the relationship can be understood as a triangle. Manufacturers develop products with standards providing a foundation for safety and performance. Laboratories test against applicable requirements and need to ensure the accuracy, reliability and validity of the results they deliver to their customers.
Australia’s electrical standards landscape also connects with a much larger international standards system. But standards cannot remain fixed while technology and society change. Solar panels, battery storage, EV chargers, smart meters and connected electrical technologies are becoming part of everyday Australian life, and standards need to keep pace to remain relevant and effective.
Importantly, safety is no longer always about looking at one product in isolation. An electric vehicle may be charging inside someone’s home and interacting with the household electrical supply. Solar panels, batteries, inverters and other technologies increasingly operate together. From an electrical standards perspective, this means considering not only whether an individual product is safe, but whether the system in which it operates is safe and reliable too.
Developing the standards behind these technologies is also more collaborative than many people may realise. Standards bodies manage the process, but technical expertise comes from committees and working groups involving industry, academia, regulators, testing and certification bodies and accreditation perspectives. There can be disagreement, technical debate and several rounds of discussion before consensus is reached. Drafts are reviewed, voted on and can proceed to public consultation because ultimately the requirements need to work consistently outside the committee room.
Sepideh brings a particularly practical perspective to that process. Before becoming a NATA assessor, she spent many years working in an electrotechnology testing laboratory. During one committee discussion, a proposed requirement was technically sound, but her laboratory and assessment experience suggested that different users could interpret its wording differently, potentially leading to inconsistent implementation. That experience helped inform the discussion. In turn, participating in standards development has given her greater understanding of the intent behind requirements when assessing organisations today.
The need to keep pace with technology is already evident in Australia’s energy transition. Standards Australia CEO Rod Balding recently highlighted in his LinkedIn article the rapid growth of electric vehicles and battery storage in Australia, noting that more than 400,000 Australian homes installed battery storage systems over a 12-month period, while Australia commissioned more grid scale battery storage in 2025 than in the previous eight years combined.
But rapid adoption also brings new risks. Balding highlighted the prevalence of lithium battery related fires and the fact that responsibility for battery safety extends beyond the person using the product. Storage, transport, recycling and end of life handling all become part of the wider system. Standards Australia, together with the Association for the Battery Recycling Industry and Powering Australia, has since published Used Lithium Batteries: Guidance on Safe Packaging and Transport by Road and Rail, a practical example of technical guidance responding as technology, its uses and its risks evolve.
But even when the right standard exists, another question remains: who can you trust to test against it?
A laboratory can issue a report stating that a product has been tested against a particular standard. But the existence of that report does not, by itself, demonstrate the technical competence of the organisation producing those results or the validity of the results themselves.
This is where accreditation becomes important. NATA accreditation independently assesses technical competence for specific activities. For laboratories, this can include examining the competence of personnel, equipment, test methods, quality systems and the validity of results, with ongoing assessment helping provide confidence that competence continues to be maintained.
The relationship is simple but important: standards establish the requirements, testing provides the evidence, and accreditation provides confidence in the validity of those results.
That confidence travels much further than the laboratory. Manufacturers may rely on test results when developing products. Regulators may rely on technical evidence when making decisions. Businesses may rely on testing when choosing products and suppliers. Eventually, those decisions reach someone who simply switches on a light, charges a phone, stores energy from their solar panels or plugs an EV into a charger and expects it to work safely.
Most people will never see the standard, the laboratory bench or the accreditation assessment behind that moment. They simply trust the result.
For organisations providing testing, calibration, inspection or other conformity assessment services, World Standards Day is also an opportunity to consider the confidence behind the results they provide. When customers, regulators and industries rely on the validity of your results, accreditation provides independent recognition of that competence and another reason for people to trust the work you do. It may also be an opportunity to explore the benefits of NATA accreditation and what becoming accredited could mean for your organisation.