Brian Hayden of HeatSpring and Kerim Baran of SolarAcademy hosted a discussion about apprenticeships and the problem of education in the Solar industry in the context of newly passed Inflation Reduction Act.
The Inflation Reduction Act comes with certain labor requirements baked into solar projects larger than 1MW in size. The new rules say that in projects larger than 1 MW, 10% of the labor must be completed by a qualified apprentice. And that number goes up to 12.5% in 2024 and 15% in 2025. And then stays at 15% thereafter. In this in-depth conversation, Brian shares the further details of these new rules, the requirements of apprenticeship labor requirements, how to best comply with these requirements.
In the second half of this discussion, Kerim Baran of SolarAcademy shared some of his thoughts about various ways to accelerate the dissemination of technical solar knowledge for professionals in the industry.
The following topics were discussed:
[0:00] Intro – Solar Apprenticeships
[0:48] Inflation Reduction Act & Solar Apprenticeship Requirements in 1MW+ Projects
[2:12] Apprenticeship Labor Stipulations, How to Comply & Penalties, Apprenticeship Programs
[10:08] The challenges of bureaucracy of tracking, training, and recruiting in Apprenticeship Programs
[11:47] How to run an in-house Apprenticeship Program vs working with Unions or using third-party Program managers
[16:30] How to share technical solar information more widely and with Open-Source principals for the entire industry
[21:50] SolarAcademy’s approach to educating solar industry professionals
[22:40] Requirements and verifications for Apprenticeship mentors (or the lack thereof :- ) )
[26:00] Various opportunities in the solar industry, especially in the design and engineering
[28:20] How to expose more people to various solar job functions and skills
[32:40] How and why Kerim thought of starting SolarAcademy and his vision on how to grow it
[35:25] Thoughts on HeatSpring and collaborating with NABCEP for solar apprenticeships
[37:50] Types of apprenticeships and need for various types of know-how & labor and efficient ways to share technical know-how.