PV Permit Manager Wanting To Do Utility Scale Solar/Battery
Hi Everyone,
TLDR: For those of you who have experience doing permit or project management on utility scale solar, battery, or also large commercial PV, how did you get there? What qualifications did you have that made you a viable candidate for your job? Would you recommend it, any notable experiences, and what other jobs has it led to for you?
I would appreciate any advice, thoughts, opinions, or feedback you have.
I’m a permit manager for a solar design company that designs residential and commercial solar. I’ve been doing this for almost a decade and am interested in utility scale PV and battery projects. I’m curious about a permit management or project management role but am unsure of whether my experience is too narrow to be a quality candidate.
I permit for contractors plus ownerbuilder’s in Southern CA so I’ve had a very wide range of permitting experience across roof, ground, carport, off grid, generator, multi battery installs, simple electrical, PV lift and relay, etc. I don’t have an engineering, design, or install background and am more on the operations/management side. I also do the bookkeeping, manage daily client communications, discovery calls for those interested in our services, and generally just keep things moving through the business.
I’ve mostly worked with local AHJ’s, fire departments, some planning review boards, and one state level agency. I don’t have federal level experience or environmental. Most of my projects that either needed discretionary or environmental reviews were grounds mounts that got swapped to roof mounts when those issues arose.
I’m not interested in staying in resi solar, it’s a large part of what I do. I’m fortunate to have cut my teeth in it, but I’m wanting to try my hand at something new and fear I’ve stayed too long in a role that’s not evolving.
Thank you all in advance and I appreciate you taking the time to read this.