[BC] Future of engineers? 2 words - SOLAR POWER

[Bill Sepmeier]

At 05:52 PM 1/5/2008, Dave wrote:


>This is all true, however my curiosity is focused on if broadcast "went
>away",
>would/could you migrate? Would it be interesting, challenging, even
>possible?


The answer is, of course.  Where?  Renewable energy.  I mean, if *I* 
could do it ....

Solar power is so understaffed right now you wouldn't believe 
it.  The SEIA estimated that there are 400,000 jobs unfilled in the 
industry last year ... and I know I have had a helluva time finding 
staff who have the right stuff to learn what, to a broadcast 
engineer, is basic technology.  Like, it's the power supply of any 
piece of gear you maintain now and pointing a satellite antenna, 
maybe ... that's about it!  Untrained, learn OJT roof installer 
monkeys are getting $20/hr and benefits nationwide right now, I just 
looked around on LinkedIN and that's pretty much the average starting 
pay.  I've been paying to have my guys trained by SEI - just trying 
to find bright people who can learn fast and giving them everything I 
can to get them up to speed.  Everybody's 
shorthanded.  Worldwide.  There's nobody doing depot repair for the 
hundreds of thousands of inverters being installed and they'll need 
repairs soon enough, lightning always strikes, even the best gear 
gets zapped.

It's an industry that is growing geometrically, folks, constrained by 
two things today - a lack of processed silicon and a lack of 
technical people to design, install and integrate the systems.  The 
demand is huge - our little retail shop is already booking this 
summer's work.  Denver Federal Center, Denver International Airport 
and lots of places like this are putting in 1 and 2 MEGAWATT solar PV 
parks.  Commercial inverters by people like SATCON range from 25 kW 
to 500kW - if you like big boxes you can work on by walking into, get 
ready - every WalMart will have one of these honkers in a couple of 
years and they'll need maintenance.  Every WalMart.  They're all 
going solar PV on every rooftop within 5 years or so, check the 
WalMart web site.  And they're just one company.   And I'm not even 
talking about CSP, concentrated solar power, which in the southwest 
will soon be producing hundreds, thousands of megawatts.  Or wind 
power.  Jeebus... we're talking about the energy business here, 
folks, only it's silicon chip based.  Hello?

Seriously.  If broadcast goes away tomorrow the broadcast engineers 
of today will be in the same boat as apostate Mormans are (as an old 
joke my Salt Lake City software developers once told me goes) ... 
you'll get another day off and a 25% pay increase ... in renewable 
power engineering.

Bill