Tag Archives: jobs

Virginia’s solar job numbers rose 9% in 2018

by

Workers install solar panels at the University of Richmond.

The Solar Foundation has released its National Solar Jobs Census for 2018, showing solar jobs in Virginia increased from 3,565 in 2017 to 3,890 in 2017, an increase of 9%.

That puts Virginia 20thin the nation for solar jobs, though only 34thif measured on a per capita basis.

Nationwide, solar job numbers fell 3.2% to 242,000 jobs as the Trump administration’s tariffs on solar panels took a toll, yet 29 states saw increases. The Solar Foundation projects a 7% increase in 2019.

The Virginia job numbers sound good until you compare us to the competition. To the south of us, North Carolina continues to eat our lunch, with 6,719 solar jobs, while Maryland to the north has 4,515. Both these states lost jobs compared to 2017, but remain way ahead of Virginia both in absolute terms and jobs per capita. (Not surprisingly, they also have a lot more solar installed.)

In fact, measured in solar jobs per capita, Virginia remains an East Coast laggard. Every state on the Atlantic except Georgia and Pennsylvania has more solar workers per capita than Virginia has—and those two states are not far behind us.

This is especially unsettling because while North Carolina and states to the north of us have renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that require their utilities to buy renewable energy, most southeastern states do not. The fact that they are beating Virginia on solar jobs suggests we have a lot of room left for improvement.

In spite of shrinking employment and the impact of tariffs, solar installations nationally rose 8% in 2018, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) in its Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. (BNEF also shows higher job numbers for solar than the Solar Foundation recorded, possibly due to different methodologies.)

More installed capacity by fewer workers may reflect higher productivity on the part of the industry, as installers learn to work better and faster, and as communities support them with streamlined permitting and public education.

The growth in utility-scale solar is surely a factor also. Rooftop residential and commercial solar is labor-intensive, while large, ground-mounted arrays allow significant economies of scale. Statistics from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) show utility-scale solar has been driving much of the increase in solar installations over the past several years.

Although solar remains a very small part of the nation’s overall energy mix, the BNEF report shows it makes up a significant share of new energy being built, even beating out natural gas in 2016 and 2017. BNEF also shows solar jobs run only barely behind jobs in gas. Considering only electric generation, solar jobs are way ahead of all other sources, including gas. (Coal lost the jobs race several years ago, even in Virginia, and in spite of the subsidies we throw at coal mining.)

For Virginia policy makers who are focused on job creation, solar is a clear winner. As the Solar Foundation notes, “In the five-year period between 2013 and 2018, solar employment increased 70% overall, adding 100,000 jobs. By comparison, overall U.S. employment grew only 9.13% during that same period.”

This article originally appeared in the Virginia Mercury on February 14, 2019. 

Potential 50,000 Rooftop Solar Jobs in Virginia, for Ten Years

by

By Will Driscoll

Virginia could produce 32 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar installations, according to a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).  Yes, that’s a lot:

  • It’s 28,500 megawatts of solar capacity—almost double the 15,000 megawatts that Dominion Virginia Power found would save customers $1.5 billion, but said it wouldn’t know where to site the solar panels.
  • Installing that much rooftop solar in Virginia would yield about 50,000 jobs for ten years, based on the number of U.S. solar jobs in 2016 and the number of megawatts of solar installed.
 ind-8-convert-solar-va-beach
Al Chiriboga and Andrew Schultz of Convert Solar install a 10 kilowatt solar system on an office building in Virginia Beach.

The NREL analysis evaluated the potential for solar on buildings with at least one unshaded roof plane that is nearly flat, or faces east, southeast, south, southwest, or west.  If any such roof plane could accommodate at least 1.5 kilowatts of solar panels, NREL modeled solar on that roof plane.  Summing across all buildings in Virginia yielded a technical potential of 28,500 megawatts of rooftop solar.  NREL found that nationwide, 66 percent of large building rooftop area is suitable for solar, versus 49 percent for medium-size buildings and 26 percent for small buildings.

The technical potential is simply what the laws of physics allow, combined with common sense—i.e., no north-facing panels.  (NREL did count west-facing panels, which have value for meeting late afternoon electricity demand, and east-facing panels, which are equally productive.)  NREL assumed an average solar panel efficiency of 16 percent, and noted that if panels averaging 20 percent efficiency were used, the solar potential would be 25 percent greater (because 20 is that much greater than 16).  At least three firms make solar panels exceeding 20 percent efficiency.

The technical potential is just a theoretical maximum.  Yet the economic potential, or the sum of all money-saving rooftop solar investments, may not be far behind, especially over the next ten years, as solar costs keep falling due to technology improvements and economies of scale.  Each year more building owners realize they can save money with rooftop solar, including Virginia school systems.

 J Elkin Install Shockoe Solar 12.7 KW.jpg
Ryan Phaup and Andrew Harrison of Shockoe Solar install photovoltaic panels in Urbanna, VA.

The Solar Foundation counted 260,077 U.S. solar workers in 2016, and the Solar Energy Industries Association reported 2016 U.S. solar installations of 14,626 megawatts.  Dividing the two yields 18 workers per megawatt of solar installed.  Finally, spacing out the installation of NREL’s 28,500 megawatts of Virginia rooftop solar over ten years would mean 2,850 megawatts of rooftop solar installed per year, times 18 workers per megawatt, or 50,000 workers—for a ten-year period.

For rooftop installations, the jobs per megawatt would tend to exceed 18, since rooftop jobs are smaller and more labor-intensive than the 2016 U.S. mix of utility-scale solar (10,000 megawatts) and rooftop solar.  That is the experience of Edge Energy, whose co-owner Anthony Colella reports that installing one megawatt of solar per year requires a staff of 20—a roofing crew, an electrical crew, a project manager, a production manager, and sales and administrative support staff.  He sees a growing solar potential in Virginia, and says his firm plans to add 15-20 staff members this year and a similar number in 2018.

On the other hand, as the rooftop solar industry grows to meet the NREL potential, economies of scale should also come into play, enabling firms to sell and install more panels in less time.  So on balance, 18 jobs per megawatt, and 50,000 jobs over ten years, seems like a good ballpark estimate.

 20160708_174506-edge-energy
Henry Portillo (peak), Tulio Guzman and Carlos Cardona of Edge Energy celebrate an 8 kilowatt solar installation in Arlington, VA.

The NREL report noted that “In practice, the integration of a significant quantity of rooftop solar into the national portfolio of generation capacity would require a flexible grid, supporting infrastructure, and a suite of enabling technologies.”

Mr. Colella of Edge Energy said that “to reach for the big numbers,” Virginia needs to lift the size limits on residential and commercial systems; eliminate demand charges on larger systems; change the voluntary renewable portfolio standard into a requirement, with a closed Virginia market for solar renewable energy credits; and allow solar leases, solar power purchase agreements, and community solar.

In response to the NREL projection, a Dominion Virginia Power representative stated that the utility is installing solar toward a state goal of 500 megawatts of solar by 2020.  Appalachian Electric Power declined to comment.

Virginia currently has 238 megawatts of solar capacity, compared to North Carolina, which has 3,012 megawatts.

While U.S. leaders were worrying about coal jobs, clean energy snatched the lead: even Virginia now has more people working in solar than coal.

by

 

va-electric-sector-jobs

Jobs in electric generation do not include fuel jobs, so for example, the coal jobs in the two charts have to be added together to get total employment. Wind and solar, of course, have no fuel costs. Charts come from DOE.

Jobs in electric generation do not include fuel jobs, so for example, the coal jobs in the two charts have to be added together to get total employment. Wind and solar, of course, don’t need employees to produce their “fuel.” Charts come from DOE.

A new report from the U.S. Department of Energy takes stock of energy employment in the U.S. and comes up with fresh evidence of the rapid transformation of our nation’s electricity supply: more people today work in the solar and wind industries than in natural gas extraction and coal mining.

According to the January 2017 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, 373,807 Americans now work in solar electric power generation, while 101,738 people work in wind. By comparison, a total of 362,118 people work in the natural gas sector, including both fuel supply and generating plants.

Total coal employment stands at 160,119. And while renewable power employment grew by double digits last year—25% for solar, 32% for wind—total job numbers actually declined across the fossil fuel sectors, where machines now do most of the work.

If generating electricity employs a lot of people, not generating it employs even more. The number of Americans working in energy efficiency rose to almost 2.2 million, an increase of 133,000 jobs over the year before.

Those are nationwide figures, but the report helpfully breaks down the numbers by state. For Virginia, 2016 was a watershed year. In spite of the fact that our solar industry is still in its infancy and we have no operating wind farms yet, more Virginians now work in renewable energy than in the state’s storied coal industry. A mere 2,647 Virginians continue to work in coal mining, compared to 4,338 in solar energy and 1,260 in wind.

Dwarfing all of these numbers is the statistic for employment in energy efficiency in Virginia: 75,552.