solar technician

field technician

senior technician

senior field technician

solar installer

Novasource-Power-Services

A typical day at work: Team meetings, and more meetings to discuss the previous meetings. Paperwork beyond the scope of reality. Constant redundant paperwork and documentation because the departments you send the information to loses it and needs the information again. Three different communication platforms to monitor, Microsoft Outlook email, Microsoft Teams, and Salesforce Chatter. 

What you believe you learned: Don't work here!

Management: Pathetic, delegate, delegate, delegate, dumps all they can on the field technicians. Was actually told by one area manager who said his job was easy "because we have minions to do our work" Yep, the "minions" are the field technicians! 

Work Place Culture: Toxic, they don't appreciate their employees. Work Life Balance does not exist. Started back in 2013 when it was First Solar, great company to work for, supervisors were top notch. Became NovaSource and started going downhill immediately. Very few original First Solar employees are left. Most have already moved on. Worst company I ever worked for. They have reduced the workforce considerably technicians included, but mostly in administrative roles and passed that work on to the technicians as well. 

The hardest part of the job: No parts for corrective maintenance, and no money to purchase parts. They don't pay their bills in a timely manner and most vendors now won't supply anything unless paid for upfront. Totally embarrassing when you have email accounts payable to assist a contractor that already performed work to get paid because the invoice is over 90 days. Frustrating to see things that need to be fixed and told to "stand down" by management because the plant owner is so upset with the company and will not pay for corrective maintenance even though it is in the contract. 

The most enjoyable part of the job: Actually getting to work in the field and be a technician but reality is mostly doing paperwork.

  

A typical day at work involves finding out at the last minute that I need to wake up at 4 a.m. to travel from the Bay Area to Sacramento to pick up partial materials for a job. Upon arrival, I’m redirected back to a different shop in the Bay Area because I’m told, “there are parts there.” This, despite having communicated for weeks that there are no parts available and that a new shipment is necessary. The response to this ongoing issue is often, “we’ll play it by ear.” Ultimately, if the job doesn’t get completed due to insufficient materials, the blame falls on me for not finishing the work. On top of that, the expectation is to complete two installations per day with only two people per team. This company only cares about numbers regardless if it's hurts the employee and the customers that been waiting for months for there system to be completed only to be told we can't we will be back one day 



O&M PV Technician:

Includes daily rounds and maintenance of Solar Site(s) and their substations.
Typically a Mon-Fri job w/outages for PM services that will require night work 2 weeks out of the year. Technicians WILL be working with voltages of 34.5-69kV at the substations as well as around energized field arrays of approximately 1100Vdc at the combiner boxes. 

Technicians are typically permanently assigned 1-2 per site and will assist other sites when needed. Tooling & work vehicle are provided by company, as well as any specific training needed for the equipment that would be worked on. 

Workplace culture is positive and helpful. Communication is pushed to the UPP (Power plant) workers for training, advise, and assistance. 

This company started okay until support from management was needed. They had a technician preforming the work of 3 people and running the site by themselves without any support. When they reached out due to being burnt out, they were told that it is there job to do these things and it's a "growth opportunity ". The technician was hired on for less than 4 months. The technician had 0 work life balance and worked 12-14 hour days for over 2 weeks. This is a very poor company and I do not see them making it another 2 years. The technician had to take PTO for a weekend day and still had to go into work because the technician that was suppose to support while they had PTO didn't show up for over 2 hours. Policy's of the company were never followed. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Paid time off, benefits,  overall work experience was ok until the original company merged with NovaSource. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Worrying about keeping your job, constantly eliminating positions and cutbacks, laying off people, mostly in the administrative and office support, not too much with the technicians and external support 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Could be better, NovaSource touts itself as such a global presence yet their work ethics need a lot to be desired 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Well I’m not at the company any more since they eliminated my positions quite a few times.

Start your day with a schedule for maintenance that needs to be completed for the day. Online sources and programs in place alongside hands on shadowing to learn the job. Management is quick to respond and easy to approach. Lots of help from all employees and an overall progressive and professional mindset and culture. Hardest part of the job is learning the software used to navigate and log work done. Most enjoyable part is being out in the field and understanding the systems while troubleshooting and fixing problems. Being able to work on your own and have the responsibility over the wellbeing of the sites. 

It’s a place you can make decent money. As much as the top management tries and says the right things the culture is terrible. Theirs is constant turn over in various departments, many stay extremely under staffed. The mid level management is absolutely horrible! It’s a place to get your foot in the door in the industry and make a decent check but it’s definitely not a place to make a long term career until they start having real accountability across the board. 

A typical day at work for me is fast paced and I am constantly learning.

I have learned valuable computer skills as well as knowledge of the Solar Industry.

Management is easy to work with and they do not micromanage which is conducive to a great work environment.

The workplace culture is great.

The hardest part of this job for me so far has been getting used to the different programs and apps used on a daily basis.

The most enjoyable part of this job is being able to learn a new industry and succeed with the help of my peers. 


Career encompasses many scopes of work which require a great depth of ability to think critically and reach to a constantly changing job scope within the Utility Power Plant/Production (UPP) side of the company. There is plenty of opportunities and the only limiting factor is how quickly you are able to adapt and learn the scope of work. Having a flexible schedule is something to be aware of as within the industry production is the metric by which efficiency is measured.

work consist of traveling to assigned job site. all work is sent threw e-mails and work orders done threw software used by the company . every day has been a learning experience dealing with the field and electricity. management is always a call away or other team members to help if needed. hardest part of the job i would say is driving and traveling to job sites the best part is the freedom to work on ur own an learn as you go plus traveling to new places

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