State’s Solar Industry Heats Up Firms Scramble to Hire Workers in Growing Field

By Gargi Chakrabarty

Colorado’s solar industry serving homes and businesses is scrambling to keep pace with growing demand.

On-site solar, or panels installed mostly on rooftops, will jump fourfold this year in Xcel Energy’s service territory alone – to 18 megawatts from 4 megawatts in the past year.

Most companies are hiring people with little or no solar experience to fill new positions, training them on the job.

“The industry has been around for a long time, but now that it is growing so quickly, there are very few people with five years of experience and even fewer with 10 or 15 years’ experience,” said Blake Jones, co-owner and president of Namaste Solar in Boulder.

Namaste employs about 45 people, roughly half of whom honed their solar skills after landing the job.

A trained work force is critical to the sustained growth of any industry, and Colorado is behind the curve when it comes to solar compared with California or Texas, for example.

Even so, with more than 15,400 employees in 2007, Colorado ranks No. 4 in the nation in renewable energy and energy research employment, according to a recent report by the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

Namaste Solar hired two employees recently and plans to hire a half-dozen more before the end of the year.

Competitor REC Solar, which is expanding into commercial installations, plans to hire 10 to 15 employees in the coming months.

Matthew Hickman interviewed this month for a construction manager’s position at REC Solar’s office in Westminster.

A tall man dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, Hickman stretched his legs and swiveled in his chair – nothing in his face giving away the fact that he had zero experience in the solar industry.

“Tell us why you are interested in solar,” asked Cary Hayes, sales manager at REC Solar, Inc. who picked Hickman’s resume from the dozens the company received for the position.

An electrician with Colorado Railcar Manufacturing, Hickman offered: “Colorado has a lot of sun, and I think solar has potential for growth with the high price of energy.

“I don’t understand just yet all the technological aspects of solar . . . but I don’t think it will be outside my grasp to understand,” he said.

A solar eclipse, however, could befall the industry.

A federal law that allows solar-project owners to pocket 30 percent of the project cost in an investment tax credit is set to expire at the end of this year. If Congress doesn’t renew the credit, the industry would expect to see a net loss of 40,000 jobs and $8 billion in missed economic investment, said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Closer to home, Xcel’s customer rebate program for on-site solar, which pays nearly half the cost of panel installations, is tapering off.

Xcel’s plan calls for rebates for 18 megawatts this year, 12 megawatts in 2009 and only 3 megawatts in 2011.

Xcel plans to augment on-site solar with utility-scale projects, spokesman Tom Henley said.

“If the ITC and Xcel rebates were gone tomorrow, our market will be gone tomorrow, too,” Namaste’s Jones said. “Subsidies must go away gradually, but in such a way that we accomplish the original goal of an orderly, sustainable solar market.”

Originally published by Gargi Chakrabarty, Rocky Mountain News.

(c) 2008 Rocky Mountain News. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.