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Students from the Training Center of Central Texas (TCCT) tour the Big Elm Solar project on Monday near Troy.
Education Reporter
Students from the Training Center of Central Texas (TCCT) tour the Big Elm Solar project on Monday near Troy.
TROY — Students enrolled in the Solar Maintenance Technician program at the Training Center of Central Texas (TCCT) in Harker Heights visited the Big Elm Solar project last week. However, the tour of the facility was more than just a field trip, according to Reginald Hodges, president and CEO of the training center.
“I believe it represents an important story for Central Texas and potentially the nation,” Hodges said.
On Monday, Big Elm facility manager Adam Smith led about 20 candidates enrolled in TCCT’s 15-week solar maintenance program around the 200-megawatt solar project, owned and operated by Virginia-based renewable energy company Apex Clean Energy.
According to ERCOT a single megawatt is enough to serve about 250 residential customers during ERCOT peak hours.
The students got a closer look at the site that sits on 3,000 acres of land near Troy in northern Bell County. They were given the opportunity to ask questions and familiarize themselves with the solar project, similar to the type of facility they may work at after graduating from the program in the coming weeks.
According to TCCT’s website, its solar maintenance course was developed in partnership with Leeward Renewable Energy and is aimed at preparing students for immediate employment through a direct hiring pipeline.
The center’s website explains that the program is designed specifically for the utility-scale solar industry, not residential installations. Through the course, students can train on Sungrow 3600 inverters, PowerTitan battery energy storage systems, drones, and virtual reality simulations to prepare for field conditions.
However, TCCT may soon expand the educational offerings available through the course.
“The missing piece in many workforce programs is the connection between classroom training and verified competency in an actual operating environment,” Hodges said. “Through our developing partnership with Apex Clean Energy, we are working to close that gap.”
He said TCCT’s vision is to expand its training beyond its Harker Heights campus and into an operating utility-scale solar facility, where students can gain supervised field experience and demonstrate competencies aligned with emerging national certification standards.
“That is why Big Elm is so important. We are not simply visiting a solar farm,” Hodges said. “We are working toward establishing an extension of our training environment at an actual operating energy facility.”
According to Hodges, the program’s current cohort is participating in the pilot of a new national certification pathway being developed with the American Clean Power Association’s Clean Power Institute. However, he stated that the certification process is still being finalized.
“It would be more accurate to describe these students as the first cohort preparing for the new national certification pathway rather than having already secured a finalized certification upon graduation,” Hodges said.
He mentioned that TCCT is also working closely with Apex on the logistics for incorporating practical field assessments at Big Elm into that pathway.
“National certification integration and the role of operating-site final assessments remain in development and require formal approval,” he said.
According to Apex spokeswoman Cat Strumlauf, Big Elm will host students in TCCT’s Solar Maintenance Technician program for their assessments, through a partnership with the Clean Power Institute. TCCT plans to bring students out about once a quarter.
“The assessments are visual. With their teachers on site, students identify key components — inverters, combiner boxes, tracker systems, etc. — and walk through how power moves from that equipment to the substation and onto the grid,” Strumlauf said. “Students and teachers won’t do any hands-on work.”
The solar site also has ties to some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions.
Strumlauf stated that the Consortium for Climate Solutions, which includes several Massachusetts organizations, including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with Big Elm several years ago.
Harvard’s Office of Sustainability webpage explains that a VPPA is a long-term financial contract through which an organization supports the development of a renewable energy project without physically receiving the electricity.
“A single buyer, or group of buyers, agrees to a fixed price for the electricity a renewable energy project is expected to generate. The project developer sells the electricity into the local wholesale market at the prevailing market price,” the webpage says. “The VPPA functions as a financial settlement: if the market price is below the fixed price, the buyer pays the developer the difference; if the market price is above the fixed price, the developer pays the buyer the difference.”
Harvard stated that the Consortium enables greater renewable energy investment through the Big Elm Solar project in Bell County and Bowman Wind, an Apex wind energy project in North Dakota.
According to the university, the two electricity projects, combined with ongoing renewable electricity procurement in New England, provide Harvard with the equivalent of 100% of its electricity from renewable sources, fulfilling a key component of its goal to be fossil fuel-neutral by 2026.
In a 2024 news release announcing the VPPAs for Big Elm Solar and Bowman Wind with the Consortium, Apex stated that, beyond their environmental benefits, the two projects would generate about $64 million in tax revenue for their communities
“These projects will provide new sources of clean electricity to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and support a more resilient and diverse electricity grid, and collectively will generate clean power equal to the electricity use of 130,000 U.S. homes for each year of the 15-year duration of the contracts,” Apex said.
Education Reporter
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