SEI Alum spearheads Village Solar Technician Accreditation (ViSTA) Program in the Philippines

In the fall, Solar Energy International (SEI) received a message from an organization in the Philippines, Stiftung SolarEnergie (StS), sharing updates on how classes positively impacted their organization.

StS’s mission is to “empower rural and marginalized villages throughout the Philippines by providing access to sustainable solar energy solutions.” Their focus areas are empowering schools, health (birthing) centers, emergency response, and communities, with sustainability resources. In the Philippines, StS is partnered with We Care Solar, a non-profit with the mission of “promoting safe motherhood and reducing maternal mortality in developing regions by providing health workers with reliable lighting, mobile communication, and medical devices using solar electricity.”

Through their connection with We Care Solar, StS solar practitioners were able to link up with SEI co-founder Johnny Weiss, and in August 2015, three Filipino solar practitioners completed an SEI online course on Advanced Battery-based PV System Design. They were sponsored by Johnny Weiss and SEI.

One StS employee who attended is the Technical Officer of StS Phil, John Vlademiere Tomas, who piloted the Village Solar Technician Accreditation (ViSTA) program, which aims to “help ensure sustainability of StS-programs by increasing local solar technical support capacity.”

Photo courtesy of StS.

According to John, “Completing SEI classes gave me confidence in conducting PV trainings.  Because of the knowledge gained from SEI, we were able to design the ViSTA training module, and are also able to provide distance-guidance to the trained local technicians.”

SEI offers basic to advanced battery technology courses including, PV203: PV System Fundamentals (Battery-Based), PV303: Advanced PV Multimode and Microgrid Design, and PV304: Advanced PV Stand-Alone System Design. These classes are available both online and in-person, you can check out our full solar installer training schedule online.  

“If you want to [work in the] solar industry or fully understand how it works, I highly recommend taking courses so you will be more confident and have more knowledge with PV Systems. SEI offers different courses that can help you in your career in PV. In a short period of time taking this course you will enjoy [it], and the most important is you will really learn a lot and meet new people that you can share ideas [with] that will help you grow in your career in PV Systems,” John said.

Do you have an SEI alumni success story? Contact SEI Marketing Manager Mary Marshall at mary@solarenergy.org.

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