To effectively train solar installers, GREEN Solar Academy must first effectively train its trainers! And this needs to happen on a regular basis. GREEN calls it the ToT (Training of Trainers) and the 2021 session kicked off yesterday in Auckland Park, Johannesburg.

What makes a good training course? Besides relevant content, the second major factor is the mode of presentation. Our goal is to deliver excellent trainings, so we pay great attention not only to what’s on the slide but also how it is presented.

Once a year, trainers from GREEN Solar Academies all over Africa are invited to the Training of Trainers event, a 3-day workshop where we top up on skills, work on new training courses and content, and integrate new trainers into the existing GREEN trainer community.

Consistency is key in delivering a training curriculum. GREEN trainers receive the exact same materials they were trained on, and therefore they disseminate the same learning in each and every SuperSolarSchool course. The standardized format allows us to measure and compare the performance of each training group.

Trainers are primarily experienced solar installers who also enjoy sharing their knowledge of PV technology. At GREEN you will never encounter dry academic theory with no relevance to today’s marketplace; our lecturers are men and women who run their own successful businesses and offer valuable insights into the soft skills required alongside a sound foundation in solar design and installation.

Regularly updating course content and training facilitators to properly transfer that information is vital to staying relevant in a rapidly-evolving modern world, and renewable energy in particular. We frequently review all our trainings and their implementation, as well as our trainers, in order to ensure a consistently high standard in all our academies.

The first day of the ToT also marked the return of GREEN’s exclusive in-person networking meetings for GREEN alumni. Day 1 ended off with a well-attended live panel discussion on the ins and outs of SSEG (Small Scale Embedded Generation) Application.