Job postings in this industry are written for people already in it. These are the 47 terms that come up most, in plain language, with how many of the 3,915 roles open on Verde Talent today use each one.
The North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners, the main independent certification body for solar work in the US. Its PV Installation Professional credential is the one most often asked for by name; the associate-level exam is a common first step for people entering the trade. Employers treat it as evidence you can work safely on a live array, not as a substitute for field hours.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation sets the reliability standards the bulk power system runs under. For jobs, it shows up two ways: system operator certification, which control room roles require, and NERC CIP, the critical infrastructure protection rules that anyone touching grid-connected control systems is trained and audited against.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration training cards, 10 or 30 hours long. OSHA 10 is the general site-safety card most field roles expect you to hold or get in your first weeks; OSHA 30 is the supervisor-level version and is often required for foremen and safety staff. Both are inexpensive and can be taken online.
Global Wind Organisation training: the industry-standard safety modules for working on turbines, covering working at height, first aid, manual handling, fire awareness and sea survival for offshore. Most wind technician postings expect current GWO certificates or will put you through them before you climb.
The Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program, a certification for electricians installing EV charging equipment. Several states and many federally funded charging projects require a certified electrician on site, which is why it appears in EV infrastructure postings that otherwise read like standard electrical work.
A licensed electrician who has completed an apprenticeship - typically four to five years of paid on-the-job hours plus classroom work - and passed a state exam. Journeymen can work unsupervised; a master electrician licence is the tier above. In solar and storage construction it is the single most requested licence.
A paid training route rather than a job you need training for: you earn a wage while working toward a licence, with structured hours and classroom instruction. Union locals, community colleges and some employers run them. It is the standard way into the electrical trades and one of the few routes that costs nothing up front.
Certified Welding Inspector, an American Welding Society credential. It appears in manufacturing and heavy fabrication roles - turbine towers, storage enclosures, structural steel - where someone has to sign off that welds meet code.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the US Green Building Council's certification for buildings. LEED accreditation turns up in sustainability, development and corporate energy roles rather than field ones - it signals you can run a certification process, not that you can wire a panel.
The technology that converts sunlight directly into electricity. A PV module is the panel itself; modules wired together form strings, strings form arrays. "Solar PV" distinguishes it from solar thermal, which uses the sun to heat a fluid instead. Almost every solar job on this site is PV work.
The box that converts the direct current a panel or battery produces into the alternating current the grid uses. String inverters serve a group of panels and are common on rooftops; central inverters handle whole blocks of a utility-scale site. They are the component that fails most, which is why maintenance roles talk about them constantly.
Battery Energy Storage System - the whole installation, not just the cells: batteries, inverters, thermal management, fire suppression and controls, usually in containers. Sized in both megawatts (how fast it can charge or discharge) and megawatt-hours (how much it holds). Storage roles on this site are mostly BESS work.
The motorised mounting that tilts panels to follow the sun through the day, lifting output by roughly a fifth over fixed-tilt racking. Trackers add moving parts to a solar site, so utility-scale maintenance work involves motors, gearboxes and controllers as well as electrical faults.
Everything in an installation that is not the panels or the turbine: racking, wiring, combiner boxes, inverters, transformers, monitoring, and the labour to put it all in. It is most of the cost of a project, which is why cost-reduction roles focus there.
Running equipment below its nameplate rating, either by design or because conditions force it - heat, soiling, a failed string, a grid limit. "Derated" in a posting usually means the site is producing less than it should and someone needs to find out why.
The housing at the top of a turbine tower holding the gearbox, generator, main bearing and controls. Technicians climb or ride a service lift to work in it. Its size explains a lot about the job: the space is confined, the components are heavy, and a crane visit is expensive enough that most repairs happen up there.
Repairing the composite skin of turbine blades - leading-edge erosion, lightning damage, cracks - usually from ropes or a suspended platform. It is a specialism with its own certifications and pay premium, and a common route for rope-access and composites people entering wind.
Bolted joints on a turbine are tightened to a specified force and checked on a schedule; loose or over-tightened bolts are a structural risk. Scheduled maintenance postings that list torque and tensioning are describing this work, which needs hydraulic tools and careful documentation.
Upgrading an existing wind site rather than building a new one: new blades, drivetrain components or entire turbines on existing foundations and grid connections. It is a growing source of work because the first large US wind fleet is now old enough to justify it.
Actual output over a period divided by what the same equipment would produce running flat out. A wind farm at 40% capacity factor produced 40% of its theoretical maximum. It is how projects are compared, and it is not a measure of reliability - it reflects the resource as much as the machine.
The process of connecting a project to the grid: studies, agreements and the physical equipment. Projects wait in an interconnection queue for years in some regions, and the cost of required upgrades can decide whether one gets built. A large share of development and project management jobs exists to move projects through it.
Where voltage is stepped up or down and circuits are switched and protected. A generating project connects to the grid through one. Substation work - commissioning, protection and control, maintenance - is a distinct skill set, and often the highest-paid field work on a site.
The assembly of breakers, switches and protective relays that isolates and protects electrical circuits. Medium-voltage switchgear experience is asked for specifically because the consequences of getting it wrong are severe and the equipment differs from residential work.
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition: the control and monitoring system that reports what every inverter, turbine and meter on a site is doing, and lets operators act on it. SCADA experience spans field commissioning and control-room operations, and it is one of the most-requested skills across every sector here.
Deliberately reducing output below what a site could generate, because the grid cannot take it, prices are negative, or an operator instructs it. It matters to jobs because operations teams are measured on availability - production lost to curtailment is not the plant's fault, and reporting has to separate the two.
Independent System Operators and Regional Transmission Organisations run the grid and the wholesale power market across a region: ERCOT in most of Texas, CAISO in California, PJM across the mid-Atlantic, MISO and SPP in the middle of the country. Market, trading and compliance roles are usually written against one of them.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates interstate transmission and wholesale power markets. It sets the rules projects interconnect and sell under. Named mostly in regulatory, market and legal postings.
A local grid - generation, storage and loads - that can run connected to the main grid or islanded from it. Military bases, hospitals and campuses build them for resilience. The work combines controls, storage and protection engineering rather than being a sector of its own.
Thousands of small resources - home batteries, thermostats, EV chargers - aggregated by software so they can be dispatched together like one plant. The jobs are mostly software, data and program management rather than field work.
Paying customers to use less power at moments when the grid is tight, instead of turning on another plant. Roles here sit between energy markets and customer programs, and are usually found at utilities and aggregators.
The procedure for making equipment safe before work: isolate every energy source, lock the isolation, tag it, and verify it is dead. On a solar site the wrinkle is that modules keep producing whenever the sun is on them, so isolation is not as simple as opening one breaker. Postings expect you to know the procedure before you arrive.
An explosive release of energy from a short circuit in electrical equipment, hot enough to be fatal at a distance. Sites run arc flash studies, label equipment with incident energy levels and require rated protective clothing. Field roles list the training because insurers and clients require it.
The National Electrical Code (NFPA 70), the US standard for electrical installation. Article 690 covers solar PV and Article 706 energy storage. When a posting asks for "code knowledge", this is usually what it means, alongside whatever the local jurisdiction has amended.
Engineering, Procurement and Construction: the contractor that designs a project, buys the equipment and builds it, usually for a fixed price. EPCs employ most of the construction workforce in solar and storage, so "EPC experience" in a posting means you have worked on that side rather than for the owner.
Operations and Maintenance: everything that keeps a finished project running - scheduled service, fault response, monitoring, vegetation and site management. O&M work is steady and local, unlike construction, which moves from site to site. Many technician jobs are O&M roles.
A Power Purchase Agreement: a long-term contract to sell a project's electricity at an agreed price, often for 10 to 20 years. It is what makes a project financeable, which is why origination and development roles revolve around signing them.
The testing that takes a built project to working: verifying every circuit, energising in stages, proving the controls and performance, then handing over to operations. Commissioning roles need both construction and operations knowledge, and travel, because the work follows projects as they finish.
Commercial Operation Date: the day a project officially starts selling power. Contracts, tax credits and bonuses hang on it, which is why schedules tighten as it approaches and construction hiring peaks just before.
The two federal tax credits behind most US clean energy projects. The Investment Tax Credit is a percentage of capital cost claimed up front; the Production Tax Credit pays per megawatt-hour generated over ten years. Which one a project takes shapes its finance model, and finance roles are written around them.
The financing structure that lets a project use tax credits it cannot absorb itself: an investor with a large tax bill funds part of the project in exchange for the credits. It is specialised, deal-driven work and a common requirement in senior project finance postings.
Levelised Cost of Energy: the lifetime cost of a project divided by the energy it will produce, giving a per-megawatt-hour figure that can be compared across technologies. Useful for comparison, easy to misuse - it says nothing about when that energy arrives.
Notice to Proceed: the owner's instruction that lets a contractor start work, issued once permits, financing and land are in place. Construction hiring for a site generally waits on it, which is why start dates in postings can move.
A megawatt is a rate - how much power something produces or consumes at an instant. A megawatt-hour is an amount of energy - a megawatt sustained for an hour. Generation is described in MW; storage needs both, because a 100 MW / 400 MWh battery can run at full output for four hours.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is the main electrical union in the US. On union projects, pay, overtime and progression follow the local's agreement rather than being negotiated individually, and hiring often runs through the local hall. Many large solar, storage and transmission projects are built this way.
On projects with federal funding or claiming the full rate of federal tax credits, workers must be paid the locally determined prevailing wage and the project must use registered apprentices. It raises pay on qualifying sites and is increasingly common in postings since the Inflation Reduction Act.
A daily allowance for meals and lodging when working away from home, paid on top of wages and usually untaxed within federal limits. Travelling construction and commissioning roles quote it because it can add meaningfully to what a job is worth.
A role based out of your home but working wherever the sites are, typically in multi-week rotations with flights and lodging covered. It pays better than an equivalent local role and is a common way to build experience fast; the trade-off is obvious and worth being honest with yourself about before applying.
Counts come from the text of the postings open on Verde Talent right now and are rebuilt daily, so they move as the market does. Definitions are written by us; if one is wrong or misleading, tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Data updated September 19, 2026