Renewable Energy Technician

This professional technical program is offered as a second year option within the Energy Management Program. The coursework prepares students for employment designing and installing solar electric and domestic hot water systems. An advisory committee made up of renewable energy practitioners guides program development.

Renewable students, along with Energy Management students, take a first-year curriculum in commercial energy efficiency giving them a solid background that includes residential energy efficiency, HVAC systems, lighting, and the usual requirement of physics and math.

In the second year, renewable students diverge from the Energy Management curriculum and take coursework that starts with two courses in electricity fundamentals and one course in energy economics. In the following terms students learn to design, install, and develop a thorough understanding of photovoltaics (PV) and domestic hot water (DHW) systems.

This new program graduated its first class in June 2004. Our expectations are that, even though we are training installers on DHW and PV systems, because of our extensive program students will be attractive to a broader job market. They will work for installation contractors, to be sure, but they will have the background to seek employment in national and international marketing and sales, materials estimating, sizing and design, etc.

Key Learning Goals

• Appropriately size and recommend renewable energy system types for particular situations.
  
• Understand and put into practice the installation protocol for Photovoltaic and Solar Domestic Hot Water Systems.
• Field experience that integrates theory and practice while providing opportunities to develop skills, explore career options, and network with professionals and employers in the field.

The graduate will also:

• Evaluate the energy use patterns for residential and commercial buildings and recommend energy efficiency and alternative energy solutions for high-energy consuming buildings.
  
• Understand the interaction between energy consuming building systems and make recommendations based on that  understanding.
  
• Construct energy evaluation technical reports and make presentations for potential project implementation.
  
• Use appropriate library and information resources to research professional issues and support lifelong learning.
  
• Access library, computing and communications services, and obtain information and data from regional, national and international networks.
  
• Collect and display data as lists, tables and plots using appropriate technology (e.g., graphing calculators, computer software).
  
• Develop and evaluate inferences and predictions that are based on data.
  
• Determine an appropriate scale for representing an object in a scale drawing.
  
• Interpret the concepts of a problem-solving task, and translate them into mathematics.
  

To see a full course schedule for both of these degree programs, go to the Lane Community College online catalog.