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In Utah’s construction boom, solar jobs are leading out
One study puts Utah’s per capita solar workforce at No. 2 among states.
For John724
For those working in the solar energy industry in Utah, the outlook couldn’t be sunnier.
According to Utah Department of Workforce Services predictions, the fastest growing job in the construction and extraction category this decade is “solar photovoltaic installer.” which is expected to grow 7% annually between now and 2030, more than doubling the workforce.
Utah had 497 installers in 2020, but it’s expected to need 1,015 by the end of the decade, according to DWS economist Gwen Kervin.
The installers do not require any specific licensing or certification, but their installations still must be overseen by licensed electricians.
“We do have a lot of non-electrician installers, and they do a fantastic job,” said Todd Wood, general manager of Gardner Energy in Ogden. “They’re good paying jobs out of high school, and they might discover after working, they want to do this electrical thing.”
The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a trade group, says Utah is a national leader in solar energy jobs. In its 2022 report, IREC pegged the state’s solar employment at 7,310 workers, which is number 10 in the nation and No. 2 on a per capita basis. All the states ahead of Utah have much larger populations.
IREC defines solar workers as those who spend 50% or more of their time on solar-related work. About two-thirds of those jobs were at installation firms. The next biggest chunk is manufacturing. Utah has relatively little solar-related manufacturing, although Florida-based Revkor Energy Holdings recently announced it was opening a solar-panel manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City.
Revkor, headquartered in Miami, Fla., is involved in multiple aspects of the solar energy industry, from solar cell and module manufacturing to EPC services and electrical contracting. H2 Gemini, based in Switzerland and Germany, specializes in making the equipment to manufacture high efficiency solar cells. The company was founded and is lead by two former executives from Meyer-Burger and Schmid-Group
The partners already have a 1 million square foot production plant under construction in Salt Lake City, Utah, where production is planned to begin in Q2 2024. The first phase will focus on building a 5 GW annual production facility, aiming for production to begin by the second quarter of 2024. The plan for phase two is to expand the capacity to a total of 20 GW by 2026.
Also planned is the establishment of a research center, which will be a second 1 million square foot facility within the manufacturing complex. The partnership reports that its goal is to use its Utah-based manufacturing and research center to drive advancements in perovskite as well as graphene, plastic recycling and new tire vulcanization methods.
Perovskites hold promise for their low cost to produce, and their thinness allows them to be deposited on most surfaces. While challenges remain with the stability and longevity of perovskites, new efficiency records have been achieved month after month in recent years, and they are edging closer to large-scale manufacturability. The major U.S. thin film solar manufacturer, First Solar, recently announced that it is buying Swedish perovskite manufacturer Evolar AB in a bid to accelerate its efforts to develop tandem PV technology.
In the Utah partnership, H2 Gemini’s role is to provide the HJT/perovskite manufacturing equipment as well as providing project management for the HJT production lines, delivering, implementing production processes and transferring IP technology. Revkor will secure the remaining funding for the manufacturing and research facilities, estimated to be over several billion dollars. The company is engaging with several funding programs that are part of the Inflation Reduction Act as well as the Department of Energy loan guarantee program and CHIPS Act. The Department of Economic Development in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Governor’s office have also been tapped for funding support.
The overall project is expected to generate over 2,500 high-tech jobs in the Salt Lake City area and contribute billions of dollars in revenue to the state of Utah.
Meanwhile, the 2023 U.S. Energy Employment Report puts solar jobs ahead of even the state’s petroleum industry or the natural gas industry. Both of those combined are still a larger employer than solar, but solar is growing faster.
Do the wages compare? All the energy industries employ people across a wide range of skills, so it’s hard to compare. In many cases it’s the same skills, like electricians.
Wood and Kervin say the state is facing a huge demand for electricians, who must complete schooling and apprenticeships to become licensed. Much of that demand is driven by the nation’s transition to electrification, including cars and trucks, but it’s also just the demands of the building industry.
“We have a higher concentration of electricians,” said Kervin. “We have a growing economy. The population is growing. That means an increase in construction.”
Wood said the residential market – rooftop solar – has been relatively flat. The commercial and industrial solar installations are where the growth is, “and those are bigger projects that are more labor intensive.”
The other major solar sector is utility-scale, and large solar farms are planned or under construction in several Utah locations.
“At any given time, we could have upwards of 200 construction workers on these projects,” said Theresa Foxley, CEO for Salt Lake City-based RPlus Energies, which has been building solar farms across the West.
“We measure ourselves in megawatts,” said Foxley. RPlus has 630 megawatts of projects completed or in the works, and that will grow to a gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) next year.
With a doubling of electricity capacity needed by 2050, she expects both supplies and labor to be straining to meet demand. “We are all doing our best to keep up.”
