Becoming a renewable energy engineer | Hacker News Reader

Becoming a renewable energy engineer

pingswept.org

20 pointspingswept8 comments

I read the article with interest, but it didn't really answer one of my burning questions - how does an established engineer cross over to renewable energy? I've worked in the dark side of oil and gas as an EE for the last 7 years, basically designing and commissioning power systems for onshore and offshore facilities.

However ever since I was a graduate, I've always wanted to be in the renewables field. Over the years I've fired off a number of applications to wind and solar companies, but they typically want someone with experience... which appears to be a catch-22 for me (ironically, people have this same problem trying to get into the oil and gas industry).

So I'm thinking of doing a masters at the local renewable energy research centre, which is conveniently located around the corner from where I live. My personal interest is in decentralised power networks, supplied by a mix of renewables and base load fossil fuels, and how they interact with the wider grid. I'm also very interested in the environmental economics / energy policy side of things, and over the past year have been doing part-time work for the environmental economics group (at the company where I work). I've almost finished an economics graduate diploma as well (1 year to go!).

And lastly, I'm going on a 6 month volunteer posting to SE Asia next Feb with Engineers without Borders, ostensibly to develop water purification systems for some rural villages (basically a solar powered RO filter as far as I can tell from the literature they've sent through).

I suppose I'm not doing all this just to break into renewable energy (though it'd be a nice payoff), since I'm ultimately just following my interests around. However my question still stands: how do I get a foot in the door? Am I on the right track? and does the industry need someone with my hodge-podge of skills?

spot on solidworks (i still can't find foss alternative)

in uni back then i learned I-DEAS (very expensive software)

i think uni = slave preparation (debt + nonstartup softwares)

another is matlab (expensive) ... my uni should teach python+numarray+matplotlib instead

NB: i self learned solidworks from manual because our research group used it (despite the official uni strong support on I-DEAS) ... i must thank my advisor

i think pg is right that the 'test' is less corrupt in graduate school because the professor (using own budget) has to work with the student (my adv is from mit, never wanted to order new expensive stuff, always build from scratch ... making us suffer in a good way)

Great post... does GreenMountain Engineering need any materials science engineers :~) ?

We haven't hired any material science folks yet. If we were to double in size (15 people -> 30 people), I bet we'd need a material scientist and a chemical engineer. At present, we're mostly generalists, with a slight bias toward the mechanical.

It took us ~3 years to get to 15; in the last 2 years we've been roughly constant, plus or minus a few people. Maybe in 2012.

How about industrial engineering?

Has your education taught you how to engineer things? Did you take a lot of math classes?

We don't have any industrial engineers at present, but when we're growing, we wouldn't rule them out. Really, we want people who are very smart, work hard, communicate well, can solve problems, and actually care about cleantech.

Regarding the specifics of solar cells (before you edited your post above), the field we span is broad, and the problems are narrow-- you can't possibly hope to have expertise in more than a small fraction of the areas in which you work. Fortunately, nobody else can either.

Actually he gets the "engineering" thing right.

I'm a chemical engineer (MS) and after 17 years on the job I ultimately came to the conclusion that earning a degree in engineering is the functional equivalent of buying your way into slavery. Didn't meet any practicing engineers who disagreed with the analysis either.

Whenever I meet a bright young teenager who expresses an interest in entering the profession I do everything in my power to talk him or her out of it.

I'd say it's sort of like slavery, in that you work hard for rewards that are generally scantier than those that employ you, but there's a major difference in that you can quit whenever you like. For people like me who actually like solving hard problems, the drudgery is not as heavy as for those who should really be carpenters, financial advisors or whatever.

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