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Abstract: Europe, North America, Australia and other individual countries have certification and testing procedures for solar thermal equipment designed to support innovation and product development and to protect consumers from poor performance and unsafe designs. For the first time, as a result of the international coll aboration under the IEA-SHC Task 43 umbrella and the working groups of Solar Keymark Network, SRCC, ISO/TC180 and CEN/TC312, it has been possible to develop a common international standard draft for solar thermal collector testing. This paper describes in detail the new ISO/DIS 9806 standard and the relevant topics which clarify and refine existing test procedures or extend their scope: including solar air heating collector testing and tracking/concentrating collector testing. The new ISO/DIS 9806 standard opens the door to a global certification scheme for solar thermal collectors, thereby helping to overcome problems resulting from many different regional certification schemes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]