Creating an Industry Recognized Energy Storage Certification Credential

Renewable Energy is one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S. and the Department of Labor has found that solar and wind technicians are the two fastest growing occupations in the nation. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has projected that 81% of all new electrical capacity installed in 2021 will be from renewable resources, primarily in the forms of solar, wind, and battery energy storage systems.

The lattermost technology is especially important, because most community college energy technology programs do not currently address energy storage, and there are no commonly accepted standards of education or training for technicians working with this technology. In this project, the ATE CREATE Energy Center is partnering with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) and the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) to create a new industry recognized Energy Storage Certification credential.

This project will build upon the draft Job Task Analysis previously developed by CREATE and MREA and will apply it as the framework to develop and launch a new Certification in Energy Storage Technology. The process will involve a comprehensive industry survey to validate a Job Task Analysis specific to the energy storage sector, organization of a committee of energy storage subject matter experts to develop certification criteria and to write questions for a comprehensive certification exam, and psychometric data analysis to ensure the rigor and accuracy of exam questions and cutoff scores.

The proposed Energy Storage Certification will be ANSI accredited and will become the uniform standards of practice for the residential and small commercial renewable energy industry. This will also form the backbone for curricula to be developed by CREATE, MREA and other education providers to prepare students to earn the new Energy Storage Certification, which will be administered by NABCEP.

This project will introduce two new industry organizations and two new industry based Co-PIs to the NSF ATE Community, thus strengthening the connection between academia and industry to provide a skilled technical workforce for the energy sector. In addition the project team will develop energy storage certification exams in both English and Spanish, making an important contribution to advance equity in the clean energy sector.

Although the proposed Energy Storage Certification developed in this project will target the residential and commercial solar sectors, many aspects of the Job Task Analysis and the industry standards that are identified in the certification will also be relevant to electric vehicles. It is possible that this effort could lead to a parallel future certification initiative for the transportation sector.

By creating a skilled and credentialed workforce, this project may help to facilitate an easier marketplace entry for U.S. firms working on future storage technologies such as lithium polymer batteries, metal-air batteries, flow batteries and fuel cells. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.