Jeff, these are legitimate complaints, well and clearly stated. I
have forwarded them on to Ezra and others at NABCEP. (I'll forward
others too.)
Allan
Allan Sindelar
al...@positiveenergysolar.com
NABCEP Certified Photovoltaic
Installer
NABCEP Certified Technical Sales Professional
New Mexico EE98J Journeyman Electrician
Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Positive Energy, Inc.
3209 Richards Lane (note new address)
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507
505 424-1112
www.positiveenergysolar.com
On 6/2/2012 4:48 PM, JRQ wrote:
I'm in the process of NABCEP re-certification and I
have two complaints about their process:
1. In the last year, NABCEP added a requirement for 3
customer surveys as documentation of projects completed.
This was released just after I had left a job doing
installations to do consulting overseas over the winter. I
had all the permitting documentation, but having just
returned to the US this spring, now I have to go back and
try to get surveys filled out from projects that were done
sometime ago. It has, for various reasons, has been a real
hassle.
I appreciate that NABCEP wants some customer feedback
on NABCEP installers, and it would have been no problem to
do this had it been an expectation from the beginning.
However I feel that they changed the rules of the game
midway through, and that's not fair. The moment you get
certified, the re-certification process should be fixed
until the next round.
2. There are three categories of continuing education
credits. There has been no indication from the
course-offerers or from NABCEP about how these courses
fulfill the categories. I mostly took classes from inverter
manufacturers that specifically list the number of NABCEP
credits the class is worth -- so there clearly was some kind
specific NABCEP accreditation involved. The onus shouldn't
be on me to guess which requirements class X fulfills,
especially when NABCEP has been involved in determining the
number of credits it is worth (as opposed to, say, taking an
OSHA course that is outside the PV industry), and when I've
paid for these classes partly towards maintaining my NABCEP
certification.
If NABCEP is going to have specific guidelines about
such things, following the guidelines shouldn't be such a
guessing game.
Jeffrey Quackenbush.
Wrenches - I'd like to address some of the
aforementioned concerns about NABCEP. I do not claim to
present the official NABCEP "company line", but I have
been a certificant since 2007, have been involved with a
few programmatic committees, and currently sit on the
board of directors.
- I certainly sympathize with Dana's frustration
with having to drive a full day to get to a testing
center. There are many others in a similar
situation and it is one of the complaints about
NABCEP that I hear most often (along with exam
frequency). Unfortunately NABCEP is still a very
small certification body relative to trade licensing
and, as a voluntary certification, we just don't
have the resources that states do.
- Allan is correct about the processes the
Exam Committees have to undergo in order to follow
defensible psychometric principles and maintain
NABCEP's ANSI accreditation.
- What additional resources would people like to use
at the exam? I would be happy to take suggestions
to the Board.
- I think most certificants would agree that there
would be a value in multiple, specialized NABCEP PV
certifications. If fact there has been numerous
internal discussions about exactly that and I think
the next certification that NABCEP develops will
fall into this category. However, certification
development takes time and money, and some of the
programs that NABCEP has developed have not received
the interest that was anticipated, so we need to
perform our due diligence before committing the
sizable resources that it takes to create a new
certification. As the PV Installer certification
stands now, it is intended to test a broad variety
of knowledge, largely because historically companies
were smaller and employees were more likely to be
generalists. The industry has obviously grown very
rapidly with one result being increased
specialization and NABCEP does intend to keep up
with this trend. With all that in mind NABCEP
welcomes targeted donations for developing new
credentials.
- Certification certainly is a business, though I
think that its worth noting that NABCEP was created
by installers who were concerned with the
workmanship of RE system installations and didn't
want to see a repeat of what happened to the solar
water heating industry in the '70s. Since its
inception NABCEP has been a volunteer-driven
non-profit entity, guided by some of the
most knowledgeable and dedicated people in the
industry (many of whom are on this list-serve).
- We are well aware of the fact that NABCEP certs
often get "promoted off the roof" and find
themselves in design, sales or managerial rolls.
Obviously this reflects well on NABCEP
certificants, but it is a problem for a program that
requires ongoing field work for re-certification.
This is yet another challenge that we hope to
address with future, more specialized
certifications. Note that it takes somewhere
between 12 and 18 months to properly develop a
credentialing program, and NABCEP has been quite
busy over the years responding to market demands for
Entry Level, Technical Sales, Small Wind, and now
Company Accreditation. We know that the industry is
changing and we need to change with it, so keep the
suggestions coming!
I think everyone I've ever met has had some idea
about how NABCEP could be better, and often times they
are right. Unfortunately NABCEP operates under the
real-world constraints of budgets, fund raising,
volunteer availability, consensus building,
accreditation requirements, etc... In the end I think
it is hard to argue that NABCEP has not benefited our
industry. NYSERDA did a study and found that systems
that were installed by NABCEP Certified PV Installers
had less issues at inspection than those built by
non-NABCEP installers. As someone who cares deeply
about installation quality and safety, this tells me
that NABCEP does provide value and fills a needed roll
in our industry.
For a brighter
energy future,
Andrew Truitt
NABCEP Certified PV Installer™ (ID# 032407-66)
Principal
Truitt Renewable Energy Consulting
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andrew-truitt/8/622/713
"Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy!
It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it
just so happens that there's an enormous fusion
reactor safely banked a few million miles from us.
It delivers more than we could ever use in just
about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!"
~William McDonough
On Wed, May 30, 2012
at 5:56 PM, Chris Mason <cometenergysyst...@gmail.com>
wrote:
One of the issues I have with the NABCEP
certification is the title. When I look at the
subject matter, comparing the scope to other similar
certifications, I feel "installer" is not really
accurate. I have a couple of workers that install PV
systems with me, and they are able to get the job
done. They are what I would call installers. They
don't work with the customer to design the right
solution and solve problems, lay out the best
approach and develop the right bill of materials.
The skills that the NABCEP PV certification Job
Task Analysis requires is more of a systems
designer. An installer does not need trigonometry,
electrical theory and mechanical design to that
extent.
In other disciplines, anyone with the depth of
knowledge the NACBEP requires would be a systems
designer and project manager. The title "Installer"
does not properly convey this knowledge and skill
set, and does not give the customer an accurate
representation of the role of the professional.
--
Chris Mason
President, Comet Systems Ltd
NABCEP Certified PV installer 092411-103
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