New Free Course – Smart Investments: Certifications and Licenses That Pay Off Credentials cost time, money, and energy. Knowing which ones are actually worth it can make a real difference in your solar career. HeatSpring is excited to host a new free course from Solar for Women: Smart Investments: Certifications and Licenses… Continue reading “New Free Course – Smart Investments: Certifications and Licenses That Pay Off”
New Course: Basics of Commissioning on Utility-Scale Solar Commissioning is where a solar construction site becomes a power plant. It’s also where schedule delays get expensive fast, defects cost more to fix than they did during construction, and the utility, owner’s engineer, lender’s engineer, and equipment vendors all… Continue reading “New Course: Basics of Commissioning on Utility-Scale Solar”
Wes Kennedy Just Updated “Energy Storage Finance.” Here’s What’s New. The energy storage market moves fast, and lucky for us, HeatSpring instructor Wes Kennedy has kept pace. The U.S. installed a record 57 gigawatt-hours of new battery storage capacity in 2025, a 29% increase over the previous year, and the… Continue reading “Wes Kennedy Just Updated “Energy Storage Finance.” Here’s What’s New.”
The Interconnection Review Process, Explained A clean energy customer’s excitement can fade fast if their project hits a roadblock. One day they’re signing a contract, the next they’re asking you why nothing has happened. The answer is often interconnection. If you work in a customer-facing… Continue reading “The Interconnection Review Process, Explained “
What Happens When AI Writes Battery Software HeatSpring instructor Peter Gruenbaum spent years writing software that tells batteries when to charge and when to discharge on utility-scale energy projects. When he built his course on battery energy management systems for HeatSpring, he leaned into AI as a… Continue reading “What Happens When AI Writes Battery Software “
Don’t Miss the PNW’s Biggest Solar + Storage Conference This April The Pacific Northwest solar and storage industry has a big gathering coming up, and HeatSpring is excited to spread the word! The PNW Solar + Storage Conference takes place April 28–30, 2026, at the Hilton Vancouver in Vancouver, Washington. This… Continue reading “Don’t Miss the PNW’s Biggest Solar + Storage Conference This April”
Don’t Have the Exact NABCEP Documentation Required? Here’s What to Do This can be a common challenge for utility-scale solar professionals pursuing NABCEP Board Certification. If you’re working toward your NABCEP PV Installation Professional (or most NABCEP Board Certifications), you’ll need to submit your decision-making role experience before you can sit… Continue reading “Don’t Have the Exact NABCEP Documentation Required? Here’s What to Do”
New Course: SCADA Communication Systems for Utility-Scale Solar The U.S. added 34.7 GW of utility-scale solar capacity in 2025, according to SEIA and Wood Mackenzie’s Solar Market Insight Year in Review. That’s a lot of plants being commissioned, handed over, and turned over to O&M teams, many of… Continue reading “New Course: SCADA Communication Systems for Utility-Scale Solar”
New Free Course: Finding a Job, Networking, and Diversifying from Solar for Women The solar industry isn’t always an easy space to break into. For women looking to join the trades, the path can feel even less straightforward. Solar for Women, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women and nonbinary individuals in the solar… Continue reading “New Free Course: Finding a Job, Networking, and Diversifying from Solar for Women”
New Course: Pre-Construction in Utility-Scale Solar The subcontractors you select, the contracts you put in place, and the commercial foundations you establish before construction starts will shape every aspect of project execution. A well-run pre-construction (pre-con) process is one of the highest-leverage things an EPC can… Continue reading “New Course: Pre-Construction in Utility-Scale Solar”
New Course: Owning the Customer Interconnection Experience Many people get introduced to interconnection the same way: someone hands them a stack of utility paperwork and says, we need these filed. So they do. They submit the applications. Then a problem comes up, and they realize there’s a… Continue reading “New Course: Owning the Customer Interconnection Experience”
What It Takes to Succeed in the Trades – Welding Program Supervisor Rachel Henry Rachel Henry knows what it looks like to be a welding student, and what it looks like to teach one. She was a 4.0 student, award nominee, and self-described “absolute sponge” in welding school. Now, as Welding Program Supervisor at… Continue reading “What It Takes to Succeed in the Trades – Welding Program Supervisor Rachel Henry”
New Course Announcement: Transformer Specification & Applications for Inverter-Based Resources As many residential solar designers move up into larger C&I and utility-scale projects, the work starts to look pretty different from a rooftop install. Transformer specification is one of those areas where the learning curve shows up fast and where… Continue reading “New Course Announcement: Transformer Specification & Applications for Inverter-Based Resources”
How the Future of DER Interconnection Could Mirror the Evolution of Booking a Flight The interconnection process can make or break a project. And yet, it’s difficult to tell exactly how bad the bottlenecks truly are. Distribution-level interconnection data is fragmented across more than 3,000 utilities regulated by 50 different states, with few central… Continue reading “How the Future of DER Interconnection Could Mirror the Evolution of Booking a Flight”
What is an Energy Market Forecaster for ESS? If a battery energy storage system is going to make money in a wholesale energy market, it needs to know something the market hasn’t told it yet – where prices are headed. That’s the job of an energy market forecaster.… Continue reading “What is an Energy Market Forecaster for ESS?”
What Tools Do You Need When Troubleshooting Ground Faults? Ground faults are one of the more frustrating issues a solar technician can run into in the field. They can range from hard faults with a clear voltage signature to resistive or intermittent faults where voltage won’t show up on a… Continue reading “What Tools Do You Need When Troubleshooting Ground Faults?”
What is a Battery Simulator? If you’re building software for battery energy storage systems, you can’t just plug into a real battery every time you want to test something. That’s expensive, potentially damaging, and frankly impractical. That’s where battery simulators come in. In Peter Gruenbaum’s… Continue reading “What is a Battery Simulator? “
New Course: Software for In Front of the Meter Battery Systems According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, developers plan to add 24 GW of utility-scale battery storage to the grid in 2026 – on top of the record 15 GW added in 2025 and more than 40 GW over the… Continue reading “New Course: Software for In Front of the Meter Battery Systems”
New Course: Energy Storage Finance Energy storage has crossed a threshold. The technology is mature, costs have come down dramatically, and customers are asking for it. Now the real work is figuring out how to structure a deal that actually pencils. Wes Kennedy has spent… Continue reading “New Course: Energy Storage Finance”
1 FREE NABCEP CEU – How We Got Here: A (Riveting!) History of DER Interconnection in the U.S. If you’ve ever hit a wall on a solar or storage project because of interconnection delays, confusing utility procedures, or regulations that seem to make no sense – this new course is for you. HeatSpring just launched a new, free… Continue reading “1 FREE NABCEP CEU – How We Got Here: A (Riveting!) History of DER Interconnection in the U.S.”