Beginning next year, union electricians will be able to get advanced training in the skills that go along with renewable energy systems and net-zero-energy buildings.
According to a report at SustainableBusiness.com, the Net Zero Plus Electrical Training Institute in Los Angeles will graduate thousands of electricians a year who have been schooled in grid-reliability technology, utility-scale battery storage, building and lighting controls, and plug-load strategies. They’ll be called “Total Solution Providers.”
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 11 and the Los Angeles chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association partnered on the new center, which will be housed in a 142,000-sq.-ft. building undergoing renovations to make it a net-zero energy facility.
“The electrical industry is currently undergoing a revolution due to improved energy-efficiency practices, integration of renewable energy on the grid, and developing clean technologies,” James Willson, executive director of the LA contractors association, told the website. “Net Zero Plus is at the center of this revolution and will transform the way buildings use, produce, store, and sell energy.”
California has a special interest in the subject because of a requirement that all new residential building be net-zero energy by 2020.
There’s already a smaller net-zero-energy training center in San Leandro, Calif., which was described in a post at GreenBuildingAdvisor last year.
The union’s interest in advanced training is more han a decade old, SustainableBusiness reports. It added photovoltaic panels to its headquarters in San Jose, Calif., in 2002, and later added solar on union training centers in New York, California, and New Jersey.
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Starting next year, a new training center in Los Angeles will offer union electricians special instruction in topics that relate to renewable energy and net-zero buildings.
