Going From Electrician to Quality Leader: Julie Stiglish’s Path Into QA/QC Julie Stiglish’s path into quality and safety leadership didn’t start in a classroom or a compliance office. It started in the heat of a Las Vegas summer, wiring up casinos as a journeyman electrician, learning what it actually feels like… Continue reading “Going From Electrician to Quality Leader: Julie Stiglish’s Path Into QA/QC”
12 Moments When Utility-Scale Solar Quality Gets Decided Every utility-scale solar project is full of moments where a defect is cheap to catch and later moments where the same defect can cost ten times as much to fix. It turns out that many quality problems on a solar… Continue reading “12 Moments When Utility-Scale Solar Quality Gets Decided”
STC, NOCT, and NMOT: Sean White Decodes Test Conditions Used on the PV Module Datasheet Every PV module datasheet lists numbers like open-circuit voltage (VOC), max power voltage (VMP), and short-circuit current (ISC), but a module rarely actually operates at any of them. Differences in temperature and sunlight cause voltage and current to skew one… Continue reading “STC, NOCT, and NMOT: Sean White Decodes Test Conditions Used on the PV Module Datasheet”
New Course: Utility-Scale Solar QA/QC Fundamentals Julie Stiglish opens her new course with a story straight out of her own field experience: somewhere on a utility-scale site right now, a two-dollar defect is being installed. Nobody’s doing it on purpose. The crew is good, the weather’s… Continue reading “New Course: Utility-Scale Solar QA/QC Fundamentals”
What the O&M Agreement Covers and Why It’s Tied to Your Financial Model Solar assets need decades of upkeep, and that responsibility needs to be spelled out in the O&M agreement. Skipped infrared testing and visual inspections, excessive panel soiling, or an inverter failure without a response plan in place are just a… Continue reading “What the O&M Agreement Covers and Why It’s Tied to Your Financial Model”
HeatSpring is the Official PVA & OMAT Training Provider for the 2027 NABCEP Conference We just signed on to be the official PVA & OMAT training provider for the 2027 NABCEP Conference. Sean White is teaching the class. Learners spend three days together at the conference training with Sean. They also get access to… Continue reading “HeatSpring is the Official PVA & OMAT Training Provider for the 2027 NABCEP Conference”
New Free Course: 10 Utility-Scale Solar Defects Hiding in Plain Sight Every defect in utility-scale solar construction is cheap exactly once – at the moment it’s installed. After that, the price goes up. A missed refusal on a pile drive log, a connector that “clicked, sort of,” a bonding clamp that… Continue reading “New Free Course: 10 Utility-Scale Solar Defects Hiding in Plain Sight”
Common SCADA Problems O&M Teams Inherit and How to Fix Them When an O&M team takes over a utility-scale solar project, they’re inheriting whatever SCADA system the construction team left behind – for better or worse. Unfortunately, there can be loose connections, misconfigured device IDs, missing documentation, and more. These are… Continue reading “Common SCADA Problems O&M Teams Inherit and How to Fix Them”
What’s New with NABCEP Credentials in 2026? Sean White Breaks It Down NABCEP credentials have always been the benchmark for solar and storage professionals, but 2026 is shaping up to be an interesting year for their credential landscape. The PV Associate exam has gotten a Job Task Analysis (JTA) update, the newer… Continue reading “What’s New with NABCEP Credentials in 2026? Sean White Breaks It Down”
What Does SCADA Connect on a Utility-Scale Solar Project? On a utility-scale solar project, SCADA connects three distinct parts of the system: the PV equipment, the substation, and the utility. Each layer often speaks a different protocol, and understanding how they fit together is foundational to working with these… Continue reading “What Does SCADA Connect on a Utility-Scale Solar Project? “
The Complete Utility-Scale Solar Curriculum: Introducing the Utility-Scale Solar Executive Bundle If you’ve been following Andy Nyce’s courses on HeatSpring, you know the catalog has grown substantially. Andy has spent over a decade working across every phase of utility-scale solar execution, and over the past few years he’s turned that experience… Continue reading “The Complete Utility-Scale Solar Curriculum: Introducing the Utility-Scale Solar Executive Bundle”
The Ultimate Guide to Getting Your NABCEP OMAT Credential The NABCEP Operations & Maintenance Associate Technician (OMAT) credential is the newest entry-level credential from the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP), and it officially launched on April 7, 2026. While the PV Associate has long served as… Continue reading “The Ultimate Guide to Getting Your NABCEP OMAT Credential”
What is SCADA? More than 43 GW of new utility-scale solar capacity is planned for 2026 in the U.S., which would represent a 60% increase over the previous year, according to the Energy Information Administration. Every one of those plants runs on a… Continue reading “What is SCADA?”
What Does It Take to Level Up in Solar + Storage Operations and Maintenance? Amanda Bybee has spent years building the systems, standards, and training that keep solar and storage assets running. As CEO of the Amicus O&M Cooperative, the creator of the Tech 1 and Tech 2 courses, she knows exactly what separates… Continue reading “What Does It Take to Level Up in Solar + Storage Operations and Maintenance?”
What is the SEIA/ANSI 301 Standard and Why Does It Matter for Solar and BESS O&M Technicians? Job titles, pay scales, and expectations for O&M technicians have historically varied widely from one solar company to the next. A Level 2 technician at one employer might be doing completely different work than a Level 2 at another. For… Continue reading “What is the SEIA/ANSI 301 Standard and Why Does It Matter for Solar and BESS O&M Technicians?”
What is Root Cause Analysis? Why is It Important for O&M Techs? When something goes wrong on a solar or battery energy storage system, the fastest fix is not always the right one. Hitting a reset, swapping a component, or clearing a fault code without understanding why it happened in the first… Continue reading “What is Root Cause Analysis? Why is It Important for O&M Techs?”
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”
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”
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?”
Why Your Solar Service Department Looks Unprofitable (And How to Fix It) If your service department looks like a money pit on paper, you might not have a service problem – you might have an accounting problem. In a recent HeatSpring PRO Circle discussion with Amanda Bybee, CEO of the Amicus O&M… Continue reading “Why Your Solar Service Department Looks Unprofitable (And How to Fix It)”