What Solar Manufacturing Can Teach the Job Site About Quality Most people who move into quality management learn it on the construction side, catching problems after they’re already built. HeatSpring instructor Julie Stiglish learned it from the other direction first. Before she was walking utility-scale sites as a quality leader,… Continue reading “What Solar Manufacturing Can Teach the Job Site About Quality”
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”
What’s New in the “Inside the Solar Executive MBA Data Room” Course The original Solar Executive MBA launched in 2012, and it was genuinely ahead of its time. There wasn’t anything else in the industry teaching solar development that way. Now Keith Cronin is bringing that same spirit of innovation to a… Continue reading “What’s New in the “Inside the Solar Executive MBA Data Room” Course”
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”
What Is a Solar Service Agreement (SSA)? Not every offtake structure looks the same once you leave the standard PPA framework, and state rules can change how a project is structured. We asked Keith Cronin, instructor of Inside the Solar Executive MBA Data Room, to explain what… Continue reading “What Is a Solar Service Agreement (SSA)?”
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”
Clawbacks & Milestones: Notable Solar EPC Agreement Clauses The EPC agreement governs the actual construction of a solar project, and two parts in particular can cause problems for developers as projects slip: clawback clauses tied to completion deadlines, and the milestone payment structure that governs how money moves… Continue reading “Clawbacks & Milestones: Notable Solar EPC Agreement Clauses”
Why Developers Get the Solar Data Room Wrong (and What It Costs Them) Ask a handful of solar developers where their project documents live, and you’ll get some version of the same answer: a folder on someone’s desktop, scattered across an engineer’s inbox, or nowhere organized at all. HeatSpring instructor Keith Cronin has… Continue reading “Why Developers Get the Solar Data Room Wrong (and What It Costs Them)”
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”
New Course: Compliant Solar Array Wiring Bootcamp Wire management is the most common deficiency Janet Hughes has seen across thousands of solar installations. She’s just launched her new “Complaint Solar Array Wiring Bootcamp” course to fix that. Janet Hughes has been in the solar industry since 1988,… Continue reading “New Course: Compliant Solar Array Wiring Bootcamp”
SCADA Acronyms Explained: What Beginners Need to Know For those brand new to SCADA, one of the first walls you’ll hit is all the acronyms. Networking, communications, and cybersecurity each come with their own vocabulary, and SCADA sits at the intersection of all three. Here are a handful… Continue reading “SCADA Acronyms Explained: What Beginners Need to Know”
What 30 Years in the Electrical Trade Taught Jason Brozen About Keeping Workers Safe In March 2026, HeatSpring’s Brian Hayden sat down with Jason Brozen at the NABCEP Conference in Milwaukee for a conversation on the Suncast Media stage. Jason is the Safety and Technical Training Manager at Tyndale, a master electrician with 30… Continue reading “What 30 Years in the Electrical Trade Taught Jason Brozen About Keeping Workers Safe “
New Courses: Introduction to Hand Tools and Power Tools for Solar HeatSpring is excited to announce two new courses from Jenny Conrardy: Introduction to Hand Tools for Solar and Introduction to Power Tools for Solar. Who These Courses Are For These courses are built for new solar employees, apprentices, and career… Continue reading “New Courses: Introduction to Hand Tools and Power Tools for Solar”
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”
New Course: Development in Utility-Scale Solar Many people who work in solar have never seen all the work that gets put in before construction begins. If you’re in construction, you inherit a project that someone else spent years putting together. If you’re in finance or asset… Continue reading “New Course: Development in Utility-Scale Solar”
What Is a Certificate of Insurance on a Solar Construction Site? Before a subcontractor ever sets foot on a utility-scale solar project, there’s a stack of paperwork that has to be in order: contracts, licenses, bonds, and one document that tends to get overlooked until something goes wrong – the certificate… Continue reading “What Is a Certificate of Insurance on a Solar Construction Site?”