Congratulations to the newest 23 graduates of the Solar Ready Vets program!  This most recent training event, led by SEI, was held at the Ft. Carson Army Base near Colorado Springs. These transitioning service members and vets participated in six intensive weeks of training and progressed from the basics of electricity, to the fundamentals of grid-tied PV design and installation. They learned not just how to install PV, but also the “why” behind what they were doing.

They learned concepts and gained skills in this rapidly evolving industry.   In addition to grid-tied applications, they learned about battery back-up and storage. The students earned their OSHA 10 hour construction card, took the NABCEP PV Associate Exam
, and practiced basic troubleshooting. Over 50% of the training involved included hands-on learning.

At the end of the training, each participant was interviewed by SolarCity, Vivint Solar, SunRun, and SunEdison.  This is the second pilot training event that SEI has led through the Department of Energy’s Solar Ready Vets program (SEI led the first pilot at Camp Pendleton). Recently, President Obama announced the expansion of the trainings to more military bases based on the success of these pilot training events!

For any solar company looking to hire, look to our veterans. In both groups that we’ve trained through this program, there are future leaders for your company. There are people who are passionate about good design, will excel at installing, and thrive in sales. In this group there are inventors, thinkers, and process people who’ll strengthen your company. In this group, there are people who are experienced in maintaining multi-million dollar inventories and equipment and who know logistics. This group knows how to work in stressful and hot environments while keeping safety at the forefront of their minds. Normally in a class of this size, you’ll have a handful of people with previous supervisory experience. However, with this cohort, 95% of them have this experience. These are the people that you want to hire.

For companies wanting to support this program and transitioning service members, we encourage you to post job openings on SEI’s job board. Or if you’d like to help welcome these service members to the solar industry by donating solar schwag, please contact Chris Turek at [email protected]. (Many thanks to NRG who donated GoalZero kits to each of the grads!)

On behalf of all the SEI staff, we wish these graduates the best of luck as they transition out of the military and into the solar industry.