A top executive at Himin Solar Co, a leading solar water heater company in China, made a series of weighty accusations on his Sina Weibo account over the weekend, claiming that most domestically produced solar water heaters are unsafe.

"Currently there are over 6,000 solar water heater producers in China, but the whole sector now has a very bad reputation," said Huang Ming, president of Himin Solar, who noted that potential safety hazards have been hurting the market penetration of domestically produced solar water heaters.

Huang said that since many companies use unqualified materials in production, the stands that support the water heaters can easily be eroded.

Huang also revealed that some solar water heaters could cause fires in extreme cases. The industry has seen numerous such cases since solar heaters started to gain in popularity, he claimed.

"It is possible that such irregularities exist in the sector because of the low threshold for entry to the industry. And since the solar water heater industry is still new in China, many quality problems may not surface in the short term," Lin Boqiang, director of the Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times.

But Lin noted that problems at some companies do not represent the whole industry. "Huang may have exaggerated the sector's problems," he said.

Huang, who is the deputy director of the national solar heater standard committee, also called for more effective national standards.

Huang said that the current national standards for the sector are more like suggestions for the companies. There are still no effective national standards concerning product safety, he noted.

Zeng Shaojin, secretary-general for the new-energy chamber under the All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce, admitted that some industry standards need to be reinforced. But, "the solar industry is more developed than other new-energy sectors, and it could not have developed as well if it had so many problems," Zeng was quoted as saying by news portal cnr.cn.

Huang said that he will expose one or two industry irregularities each month, to bring changes to the sector.

Wang Zhao, president of MY Solar Investment Corp, told the Global Times that it is possible that Huang is "promoting his own company" by emphasizing the high standard of Himin.