Jobs in solar Energy
Let’s be honest: with the solar market in continual flux, jobs in solar energy are not exactly a stable career choice.
However, the solar market is a huge, diverse place which is always changing and developing. It’s a place of opportunity for entrepreneurs to develop new market niches, as well exciting career prospects for the adventure minded job seeker. But beware: things will always change, and only the flexible employee or innovator will get the best out of it.
When thinking about employment in solar, it’s important to understand that – as is many industries – there are lots of different areas. Below is a breakdown of how to consider getting a job in solar energy
Jobs in Solar installation
Over the last ten years, solar installation jobs have been highly unstable. At several points the market boomed, only to find, a few years later, that customers had disappeared. These days, only installers that have a very small core team, plus the ability to recruit extra hands at short notice – have survived.
This is not an idle phenomena: in the last five years in the UK several big installers with big staffs have gone under because of their high operating costs (i.e Southern Solar in 2016).
If you’re looking for a job as a solar installer look for organisations that have flexibility, or ones that have deals with large retail operations (like Genfit and Ikea, for example). Historically, the most successful small solar installers have been those that do something else along side – electricity work or plumbing, for example, so that when the inevitable subsidy cuts arrive you’ve something to fall back upon.
Even the largest installation company in the UK – SolarCentury – has had years of difficulty with its original investors – it didn’t make a profit until ten years after its inception, and even today only survives because of its multiple operation in countries outside the UK.
Jobs in solar financing
Solar energy business models require a high degree of competence in understanding the financial models. Competence in excel and an ability to nail down the reality against the imaginary is fundamental. This is a highly innovative area of solar – new business models have always been at the heart of the solar industry.
No-one expected it to be as big as it is, and the fact that it exists at all is not because people bought and owned their own solar – it’s because some financial brains came up with the idea of third party ownership. Experience in financing usually required, but understanding solar business models (usually expressed in excel spreadsheets) is going to be key.
Jobs in solar project development – community energy
While installations have fallen, there is still plenty of appetite to bring project to financiers who can invest in them. Solar has proven a highly lucrative investment for many wealthy people – and as such they’re looking for more.
For project developers, therefore, an ability to make deals is key (for example between landowners and investors). If you’ve an ability to talk to people, then there are opportunities. Expect a load of due diligence to be done on your proposal – money men do not put their cash without being extremely careful about it. Brighton Energy Coop is a solar developer that mediates between its financiers (our community of investors) and our host sites. It requires expertise – but not a whole lot different from many energy project development tasks.
Community Energy groups provide a great way to get into the solar industry – there are more than 200 groups around the country; working with a local group is a great way to learn the ropes.
Jobs in solar Maintenance
There are 900k solar installations in the UK. All of these need maintenance, and potentially upgrades. There’s an increasing market for people to look after the UK’s large solar fleet. While domestic solar owners don’t always appreciate this fact, solar farm owners are increasingly aware that the millions they’ve spend on solar in fields requires someone to look after it. Requires a technical understanding of how solar operates – not just theoretically – something that is not often catered for by educational institutions. Lightsource, for example have in the last few years developed their own in-house maintenance programme, whereas others like howard have done their own startup.
Secondary Market – due diligence
As noted above, solar is a very in demand investment. But investors are not stupid. They need to mitigate risks around buying renewable energy kit. That means they need accredited institutions to tick the various boxes that ensure that what they spent their money on actually works. Several organisations have carved out a lucrative niche in mediating between investors and solar owners (i.e. OST) , in order to ‘give comfort’ to solar investors.
Working in the solar secondary market requires a high degree of technical competence, and an understanding of how solar actually works when it’s been sitting on the ground for ten years, again, experience that is not necessarily catered for from educational establishments.
Solar energy start ups
In the middle of all technical-financial know how is the entrepreneurial spirit that created the solar industry in the first place. This is the principle upon which Brighton Energy Coop was founded in 2011. If we hadn’t come up the community energy business model then we wouldn’t exist today.
Solar and renewable energy in general is a very new area. And while a huge industry exists around it, there’s nothing to say that innovation and new thinking isn’t going to revolutionise the whole thing – just look at what Tesla’s Elon Musk has done to the electric car world. To do innovate in the solar space requires a strange, determined fascination with the idea that you have, and a tenacious ability to keep on at it where most people would given up.
There’s no advice on how to be like this, nor guidance on how to learn it. In fact the determination behind it is more like a state of being. To follow the fascination that leads to a conviction that you’ve seen the future is a rare gift. But history shows that the great innovators of our time are the ones who have the guts to get out there and go against what already exist, to ignore the defined contours of how things are at the moment – and do something new.
We need these kind of innovators in the renewable energy industry. Our planet needs them, let alone the hideous structure of the existing energy industry.
That means there’s only one thing to say – go for it!
