Girl power meets solar power

AUSTIN (KXAN) - It's a fast-growing industry in Texas that's picking up alot of interest along the way: renewable energy .

More homeowners are installing solar panels on their rooftops wanting to soak in sunlight and put it to good use. More ordinary people are taking classes, becoming self-made solar energy experts.

"This is coming," said one such student, Jessica Knight. "This is the next big industry that I really want to be involved in, and I think Austin is prime for it."

Knight is a stay-at-home mother of three.  While the energy industry has mostly been a man's domain, Austin Community College wants to swing that pendulum by offering a Women In Solar class.

"The solar energy industry is kind of like the computer industry 30- to 40 years ago," said solar instructor Cathy Redson. "In the beginning, a lot of the jobs were programmers and system programmers. Now, that's very few of the jobs in computer; same thing in solar. As the industry gets started, a lot of the jobs have been on installers, but now as the industry is maturing, the industry has created jobs in a variety of categories."

With more opportunities in sales, marketing, public relations, design and project management, Redson said the market is wide open for women to go after those jobs.

"I'm not even taking this class because I necessarily want to install things," said Knight. "I think that's a wonderful side effect, but I do communications work and marketing work, project management. Understanding this from the ground up is actually going to be a boon to me."

The class is also booming, with 15 women enrolled this summer. And instructors said they hope the numbers keep climbing.

The federal government is joining the effort. The Department of Labor gave ACC a grant to help recruit more women to sign up with their Women in Green Jobs campaign.

"This class is groundbreaking," said Knight. "I think women getting involved in this as intricately as possible is a boom to the industry."

As part of the class session, the women, along with a few male students, spend two Saturdays in a lab. They design and learn how to install their own solar power system.

"They've learned how solar makes electricity from the sunlight, how that uses different environmental conditions to maximize that power production, how you access the potential of solar at a site, how you then design a system," said Redson.

Watching the women install their own system is almost a reminder of Rosie the Riveter , the World War II icon whose image of rolled up sleeves and gritty hands stood as a symbol of power and liberation.

In ACC's Women In Solar lab class, women handle heavy power drills, screwdrivers and other tools as though they're featherweight. They wire junction boxes, drill holes and weave wiring in and out of life-size solar panels.

"Having actually gone through the actual exercise of working with the tools and installing the system yourself gives you that knowledge and first-hand skills and hands-on experience to be able to do those jobs and do them better," Redson said.

That is the exact purpose and initiative of the class. Knight said women will offer stiff competition in this up-and-coming green industry because of their unique abilities.

"All the good traits of women can be utilized here - and all the things that us moms bring from home and everything else," Knight said. " We've got plenty of stuff to offer that will benefit the industry."

ACC will offer the Women in Solar class again in August. Click here for more information.