This morning I had the honor of being an opening plenary speaker at the annual IREC conference in Albany NY. My presentation on “Photovoltaic Training – Maintaining quality in a rapidly growing industry” was delivered to a group of 400+ top solar educators, community college professionals, and continuing education organizations from the US, Canada, Germany, and beyond.
The rapid growth of solar training organizations has been tremendous. In less than 2 years, the number of solar training programs has expanded from under 10 to over 120 in the US. The IREC conference proved to be an ideal forum to help the education sector make quality decisions on the future of training program development.
The key elements for developing a quality program are 1) quality instructors, 2) quality cirriculum, and 3) developing a greater range of training options beyond the traditional PV design and installation “40 hour course”. I outline the challenges to maintaining quality in PV education, and address the tools for quality PV training program development. Click this link to view the entire presentation.
This is definitely the future of all