Wind-power industry seeks trained workforce
Chim
Interest in green-collar jobs is surging among workers from struggling
industries. Colleges like California's Cerro Coso are scrambling to
help fill the lack of technical education for the field.
By Marla Dickerson
March 1, 2009
Reporting from California City, Calif. -- One man in the classroom
earned more than $100,000 framing tract homes during the building
heyday. Another installed pools and piloted a backhoe. Behind him sat
a young father who made a good living swinging a hammer in southern
Utah.
But that was before construction jobs vanished like a fast-moving dust
storm in this blustery high desert. Hard times have brought them to a
classroom in rural Kern County to learn a different trade. Tonight's
lesson: how to avoid death and dismemberment.
This is Wind Technology Boot Camp at Cerro Coso Community College,
where eight weeks of study and $1,000 in tuition might lead to a job
repairing mammoth wind turbines like the ones sprouting up across this
region.
The work requires smarts and stamina. It is potentially dangerous.
Candidates need good knees, a cool head -- and a stomach for heights.
"I've seen guys just freeze halfway up the tower," said instructor
Merritt Mays, a baby-faced former Marine, who at 29 is already a
grizzled veteran in this young industry.
For those who can hack it, starting pay ranges from $15 to $20 an
hour. Crack technicians can make six figures a year. Wind farms are
hiring and probably will be for years to come. That's luring hard hats
like 49-year-old Chuck Patterson back to school, despite the inherent
risks of working 300 feet in the air.
"This is where the money's going to be," said the Ridgecrest, Calif.,
contractor, who likes the idea of a steady paycheck after years of
construction boom and bust.
As in previous recessions, this economic downturn is boosting
enrollment at community colleges and vocational schools. Classrooms
are swelling with workers from hard-hit industries who are looking to
change careers.
Educators say the difference this time is the surging interest in so-
called green-collar jobs. President Obama wants to create 5 million of
them over the next decade. What isn't clear is how the U.S. is going
to prepare this workforce.
Technical education for renewable-energy workers is scarce,
particularly for the fast-growing wind industry. Only a handful of
wind programs operate in community colleges. Cerro Coso filled the 15
slots in its boot camp within hours. The next course is already full.
The U.S. last year surpassed Germany as the world's No. 1 wind-powered
nation, with more than 25,000 megawatts in place. Wind could supply
20% of America's electricity needs by 2030, up from less than 1% now,
according to a recent Energy Department report.
California is the No. 3 wind state, behind Texas and Iowa. A slew of
developments are in the pipeline, including in Kern County, where
hundreds of turbines already dot the wind-swept ridges of the
Tehachapi mountain range.
"This is going to be ground zero for alternative energy" in
California, said Jim Fay, vice president of academic affairs at Cerro
Coso Community College, which has five campuses in Kern County. "We
have to prepare our students."
The economic crisis has dampened growth in the renewable sector. But
the U.S. wind industry is clamoring for skilled technicians to
maintain the 30,000 wind turbines already in the ground. The best
workers combine the knowledge of a top-flight mechanic with the
endurance of an alpine mountaineer.
"It's like [working on] a school bus on top of a really long pole,"
said Bob Ward, a marketing manager for sensing and inspection
technologies for General Electric Co., one of the world's top turbine
makers. "It's complex. This isn't some Jiffy Lube job."
A typical 1.5-megawatt GE unit costs $2.5 million installed. It sits
about 30 stories above the ground at the hub, where its three 100-foot-
long blades connect to the tower.
Just behind the hub is the housing for the gearbox, drive train and
other components. Think of this as the wind technician's office.
Except there's no elevator. Reaching it means climbing rung by rung on
a narrow steel ladder attached to the inside of the tower. An agile
worker can do it in less than 10 minutes, several times a day.
"You earn every dollar you make in this industry. It's plain hard
work," said Dan Templeton, program chairman for wind energy at Texas
State Technical College West Texas.
Advice to hopefuls: Quit smoking. Lose that gut. And don't try this
with a hangover.
Technicians must be hyper-vigilant in an occupation that combines
dizzying heights, tight spaces, high-voltage electricity and spinning
metal.
Fatalities are rare but unspeakably gruesome.
Workers have plunged to their deaths, been electrocuted and been
ground to a pulp by rotating machinery.
Teaching students to respect these beasts is the job of wind
instructors such as Mays, who grew up on a ranch in nearby Tehachapi.
His employer, Airstreams, is a private wind-training firm working with
Cerro Coso to put on the eight-week boot camp. On a recent evening,
Mays lectured students on the importance of daily inspection of the
safety harness, the lifeline that every wind technician straps on
before climbing.
"This is what's going to save your life, so you'd better be sure it's
working," Mays said. "I don't want to be the one to have to look your
wife in the eye and tell her that you're gone."
The potential danger doesn't appear to faze 18-year-old Shelby Young
of California City, a dirt-bike rider and the only woman in the class.
"I like the adrenaline rush," she said.
Josh Gates' biggest worry is supporting his family. The unemployed
builder, 27, left his pregnant wife and young son in Greenville, Utah,
to attend the class. He bunks in a friend's motor home, making the
long drive home every few weeks.
"It's going to pay off in the end," he said.
The near certainty of landing a job that pays well has students
scampering for available training spots.
Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, N.M., launched its wind
program last fall with 32 students. GE offered to hire every qualified
graduate for three years, leading to a nationally televised news
story. The school has since been flooded with hundreds of inquiries
from across the country, spokesman John Yearout said. He's scrambling
to find another instructor.
It's much the same at Iowa Lakes Community College, where wind
students have "two to three job offers each" by the time they complete
the two-year program, spokeswoman Angie DeJong said.
The school will admit 102 students this fall, up from the 72 it had
planned to take, because of surging demand, she said. Inquiries come
in daily from the jobless. On a recent morning it was an unemployed
Nebraska engineer, then a Michigan autoworker.
"We're seeing a lot of nontraditional students with families who have
gotten laid off," she said.
California's community colleges are trying to get wind technicians
into the workforce faster with the accelerated boot camp system. Cerro
Coso and Shasta College in Redding are the first institutions out of
the gate. More are on the way.
The goal is to have 50 schools around the state offering wind training
within a few years, said Peter Davis, director of the community
college system's Advanced Transportation Technologies and Energy
initiative.
That could prove a tall order considering California's budget woes.
Students are jumping at the few seats available now. Laid-off house
framer Shane Culleton of Rosamond, Calif., borrowed $1,000 from his
mother-in-law to enroll in the Cerro Coso boot camp. The 29-year-old
father of three is so confident that he'll find a job that he vowed to
sell his beloved motorcycle if he fails.
"It's going to be a while before construction comes back," he said.
"I've got to do something."
Prophet Mohamed the child Fucker
n Mar 2, 9:29 am, Chim <Chi...@aol.com> wrote:
> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fi-wind-bootcamp1-2...
ไต่สวนได้ในวันที่ มกราคม - Real Hetjman-Slobo-Varman เขียน:
tourists
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This can be converted into electricity to fuel Cambodia economy. Not
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\On Mar 2, 11:20 am, Prophet Mohamed the child Fucker
> > marla.dicker...@latimes.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -