New Job!
It’s been a while since my last blog entry, but that’s been mainly because I’ve been busy doing the things that I could be blogging about. It’s been hard to blog while studying in my Solar Technology-turned-PV System Design class, and just as it was ending I landed myself a new job!
I now work as a solar specialist at Sundogs Solutions, a company that does home performance, weatherization, renewable energy, and green building. We are working to expand the solar side of our business, and thus I find myself playing an important role in the company. I just started on May 10 and already I have a ton to do!
It’s been great so far, and it’s exciting where I will soon be headed. I will be in charge of both solar thermal and PV installations. I’ve already done my first PV design project, coming up with the system and pricing it down to the last screw.
I can’t wait to get solar on more homes and businesses. Everyday I walk around and see empty rooftops that would be prime real estate for solar panels. There is so much space! Business will be neverending, and so will my work. So stay tuned for my next blog entry…it might be a while.
My home office
I have my office on the east side of what used to be an old carport that was enclosed to make a storage room. We bought the house that way, and decided to turn the room into an actual sunroom that would be my office (though I originally insisted that it should be a family room).
The new sunroom has wall-to-wall windows on the west and north sides, and the east window was expanded during renovation to make it wider for more morning light. We have beautiful views to both the west and the east (the new carport is just to the north, so we just have a view of the cars in that direction). Light streams in from the east during the morning, right onto my desk which is centered on the east window.
I can see deer passing by, hummingbirds visiting the shrubs outside my window, and birds soaring in the sky. I can see every car that goes up and down our road, every neighbor that is out walking. I have a clear view of the sky, and can see storms brewing and winds blowing just as easily as I can see a beautiful sunrise. If I look downward, I see my laptop screen, and if I look just to the right I see my second monitor. If I’m up late, I can see the moon rising outside my window at night. Read more…
Applied to Durham Tech’s Solar Technology Course
It took me a while, but yesterday I went to Durham Tech’s Orange County campus and completed my application for the Solar Technology course. The two people I spoke with were enormously helpful, and I ended up submitting my application as a visiting student also – to get my foot in the door for the fall semester. So today, I’ll write about my experiences at the campus, some information about the programs offered, my consideration of the Renewable Energy diploma, and then some thoughts toward the future of solar power.
The Campus
The Orange County campus building is absolutely beautiful. It was more than I had expected it to be, and I already had high expectations from what I had read on Durham Tech’s website. Once you turn off Highway 86 onto Waterstone Drive, you’re on a big but otherwise empty road through forested and open parkland until you drive around a gentle curve, and there before you the building emerges up on a hill. Approach the building from the other direction (Old Highway 86) and you see the very front of the building, decked outside with its triple array of solar panels.
The building is a green building, with lots of natural skylight indoors. There is also an expansive park-and-ride lot to enable easy public transportation to and from the building. The parking lots themselves were also expansive compared to the number of cars that were actually there that day; I’m sure there will be more in the future as more students sign up for the Sustainable Technologies program. Read more…
Categories: Solar Education Tags: Durham Tech, education, future, job, solar, Solar Technology
Working a green job
Green jobs are, in my opinion, the best kinds of jobs. They are good for the environment, usually have some element of social responsibility, and pay a living wage. There is nothing excessive about a socially responsible green job; you get enough to live by, you give enough back for others to be able to do the same. Everyone wins.
How to find a green job
More people than ever want to be at a job that’s friendly to the environment and families. Only a few want to be at jobs full of politics, corruption, and bureaucracy. So how do you find a green job at a time when it’s difficult to find any job? Read more…
My career working at home
I have a pretty good career as it is. I am a co-manager of HiViz.com, an online business that offers kits and assembles trigger circuits for high-speed photography. I perform the majority of the kit packaging, assembly, testing, and order packaging, as well as the web design. My husband does the customer support, shipping, and web content updating. We truly have a real work-at-home business that has grown practically from nothing into what it is now. Read more…
The beautiful simplicity of solar panels
It might be hard to see, but I see an implicit beauty to solar panels.
A solar panel has just one purpose in life, and that is to generate electricity for as long as it can. When it is manufactured, its purpose in life never has a chance to be ambiguous. It is readily apparent what the solar panel is for – to take sunlight and convert it to electricity.
It doesn’t matter what the weather conditions are – neither rain nor sleet nor a little snow will stop the solar panel from making its electricity. As long as a few photons can reach the panel from the sky, an output will be made, no matter how feeble. The solar panel never tires of performing its duty, its one job function in the whole world.
When darkness falls, and almost all the people are asleep in their beds, the solar panel must also wait in anticipation for the arrival of a new day. No output can be made in the depths of darkness.
When the solar panel grows old, its output may decline. However, if kept in good repair, it will function for a long time. Each and every day that the sun rises with certainty, the solar panel will output electricity with certainty, until it suffers a terminal malfunction. On that last day of its life, it will produce its last bit of electricity, and then no more.
What happens to solar panels that have died? Do they get recycled to ashes, and their ashes turned to dust from which new solar panels are made? The cycle of life would then continue, powered by the energy the solar panel had helped to capture during its lifetime. That would be fitting.
