Electrical Training Centers Receive Solar Photovoltaic Systems

Electrical Training Centers Receive Solar Photovoltaic Systems

Aug 26 - Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR)

As utilities offer customers more incentives and the cost of equipment continues to decrease, solar energy is finding greater acceptance. Electricians, theoretically, should be cashing in.

And while some electricians are indeed making a living installing solar photovoltaic systems, many others are missing out. It's not necessarily because of a lack of interest: Many electricians simply can't get hands-on experience at their local training centers.

Right now there's not a whole lot of these systems out there in the real world, so most of our apprentices and journeymen don't have an opportunity to see them functioning, said Dan Campbell, training director for the Central Electrical Training Center, a joint venture of the National Electrical Contractors Association and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. As the cost of conventional energy increases and as the cost of solar decreases, eventually those two cost curves are going to cross. When they do, there's going to be a very large market here. Anyone who has the training will be capable when that time hits us to go out and do the work.

Currently, most of the available work is being done not by electricians but by such trades as the glaziers and the laborers, according to the Central Electrical Training Center. If that's the case, the field could be leveling: Seven electricians' training centers statewide have new photovoltaic systems, courtesy of an equipment grant by Energy Trust of Oregon Inc.

Three community colleges - Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Lane Community College in Eugene and Klamath Community College in Klamath Falls - received grants. Grants also went to the Crater Lake Electrical JATC Training Center in Medford, the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center in Portland, the Central Electrical Training Center in Tangent and the Local Union 290 and IBEW Training Center in Redmond.

For each training center, Energy Trust either purchased a photovoltaic system from a supplier and had it delivered or provided funds so the training center could buy a system.

What most centers ended up with was a one-kilowatt panel array using crystalline photovoltaic modules, with a grid-tie inverter so the systems could tie into a utility and be net-metered. Although some training centers added money of their own and upgraded their systems, every training center ended up with technology that's not necessarily a new development, but it's sort of the latest and greatest that electricians will encounter in the field, Energy Trust solar program manager Kacia Brockman said.

They will install and de-install and re-install, Brockman said. They'll have hands-on experience, touch the equipment, make the connections, look inside, put it inside, see what happens, measure the voltage, measure the current - all that stuff.

While the systems will be plugged into the power grid and thus be eligible for rebates - $3 per watt from Pacific Power and $3.25 per watt from Portland General Electric - they'll be taken off line for training so often that the training centers probably won't save more than $100 per year in electric costs, Brockman said.

But while the training centers won't receive significantly smaller electric bills, they should end up with better-educated electricians.

At the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center in Portland, we had a smaller system that we initially purchased through our national chapter, but it had limitations, electricians' instructor Brian Crise said.

It was a single mounting system, where now we have three different mounting systems to practice different techniques of craftsmanship, Crise said. With the economic times, we weren't really in a position to get all of those things ourselves. We have a ballasted rack system, a commercial-type system and a mock roof that would simulate a residential-type system - We can't wait to train on it.

While Crise's students at the training center will learn the proper sizing of arrays and how to keep a photovoltaic system connected to a roof, they'll also learn more about safety procedures. While most of the monitoring equipment they use is for alternating-current electrical power, solar photovoltaic systems use a direct current.

The fact is, some meters and some devices that detect voltage won't acknowledge (direct current), he said. With (direct current), some people might not think it's there when it actually is. They might use the wrong meter, and (direct current) is there, and it could injure them.

At the community colleges that received Energy Trust grants, new photovoltaic systems have been planned for some time, but funds weren't available.

Being a state-funded organization, things don't happen very quickly, Lane Community College director of energy programs Roger Ebbage said.

At Lane, Ebbage directs a new renewable energy program that teaches students about solar domestic hot water systems and solar photovoltaic systems, and then sends those students into the community. Eugene residents buy the products and then students provide the labor under the guidance of a licensed electrician to take it from school to reality. But that wasn't possible without a photovoltaic system to train on.

As students come through our program, they get theory, Ebbage said. They need something to put their hands on.

For far more extensive news on the energy/power visit: http://www.energycentral.com .