Derek Mast, a Pennsylvania master electrician, has assembled – and is ready to disassemble – a training solar system at the Lancaster County Career and Technology Center. The purpose of the 6.4 kW solar-plus-storage system, said the installer and father, is to train the future.
Grants for workforce training from a local power company and the Lancaster County Career and Technology Foundation made the project possible.
The students laid the solar panels and racking in the grass, giving the young electricians easy access. There are two kinds of solar panels – leftovers from prior jobs, donated by Mast’s employer. He “would love to see companies” help a local school, it probably has enough “extra” gear in the warehouse to help as “educational institutions don’t need much to create a small system.”
Mast chose an inverter and battery respected among the solar do-it-yourself community — a refurbished EG4 6000XP. The inverter, combiner, battery, AC panel, and other components were also installed by the students as Mast watched and guided.
“Getting to show [the students] the nuts and bolts of how a system gets installed and then being able to see it work is just the coolest,” said Mast. “I think I would love to do more of this. I think it’s a great program for [a] career training center to have going forward.”
To keep the regulatory side of the project simple—and safer for learners—the system isn’t connected to the power grid. The system energizes its light bulbs and charges the batteries connected to the inverter only when it is switched on.
However, that doesn’t stop training.
Because the system is intended for education, Mast designed it to show the wiring that runs between the solar panels. Normally, this wiring is enclosed in conduit. However, to help students understand the routing of circuits – the paths of electricity from solar panels to inverter to battery – the wires were left visible.
Mast said he also benefits from teaching by gaining access to a “beginner’s mind”:
“I absolutely love talking to students about this kind of thing because they will hit on so many things that I just kind of forget that people think about… when you’re in anything for a long period of time and you get really good at it, it’s hard to remember the basic steps. I always find a benefit in teaching new apprentices.”
Mast notes, “Remembering the basics is always beneficial for any expert… if you forget that stuff over time… you’re going to start picking up bad habits and apathy.”
Future plans include integrating a generator and making the system more “visually accessible.” Mast said this represents what a lot of his residential customers want, so the students need to know how to install it. He also wants to open the AC panel [move location reference to caption] so the wiring can be more visible during training.