This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab.
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For those working in the solar energy industry in Utah, the outlook couldn’t be sunnier.
According to Utah Department of Workforce Services predictions, the fastest growing job in the construction and extraction category this decade is “solar photovoltaic installer.” which is expected to grow 7% annually between now and 2030, more than doubling the workforce.
Utah had 497 installers in 2020, but it’s expected to need 1,015 by the end of the decade, according to DWS economist Gwen Kervin.
The installers do not require any specific licensing or certification, but their installations still must be overseen by licensed electricians.
“We do have a lot of non-electrician installers, and they do a fantastic job,” said Todd Wood, general manager of Gardner Energy in Ogden. “They’re good paying jobs out of high school, and they might discover after working, they want to do this electrical thing.”
The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a trade group, says Utah is a national leader in solar energy jobs. In its 2022 report, IREC pegged the state’s solar employment at 7,310 workers, which is number 10 in the nation and No. 2 on a per capita basis. All the states ahead of Utah have much larger populations.
IREC defines solar workers as those who spend 50% or more of their time on solar-related work. About two-thirds of those jobs were at installation firms. The next biggest chunk is manufacturing. Utah has relatively little solar-related manufacturing, although Florida-based Revkor Energy Holdings recently announced it was opening a solar-panel manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Meanwhile, the 2023 U.S. Energy Employment Report puts solar jobs ahead of even the state’s petroleum industry or the natural gas industry. Both of those combined are still a larger employer than solar, but solar is growing faster.
Do the wages compare? All the energy industries employ people across a wide range of skills, so it’s hard to compare. In many cases it’s the same skills, like electricians.
Wood and Kervin say the state is facing a huge demand for electricians, who must complete schooling and apprenticeships to become licensed. Much of that demand is driven by the nation’s transition to electrification, including cars and trucks, but it’s also just the demands of the building industry.
“We have a higher concentration of electricians,” said Kervin. “We have a growing economy. The population is growing. That means an increase in construction.”
Wood said the residential market – rooftop solar – has been relatively flat. The commercial and industrial solar installations are where the growth is, “and those are bigger projects that are more labor intensive.”
The other major solar sector is utility-scale, and large solar farms are planned or under construction in several Utah locations.
“At any given time, we could have upwards of 200 construction workers on these projects,” said Theresa Foxley, chief of staff for Salt Lake City-based rPlus Energies, which has been building solar farms across the West.
“We measure ourselves in megawatts,” said Foxley. rPlus has 630 megawatts of projects completed or in the works, and that will grow to a gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) next year.
With a doubling of electricity capacity needed by 2050, she expects both supplies and labor to be straining to meet demand. “We are all doing our best to keep up.”
