The Australian Wind Turbine Maintenance Technician qualifications (now live).

 The certificate 4 in Large Scale Wind, and its associated career pathways have formally arrived as part of the Australian Electricity Generation Training Package. This has been a long few years for myself and a few other people in the industry working towards making this qual happen, so I am glad we are here.

The qualification can now be found on training.gov.au,

http://training.gov.au/Training/Details/UEP40612

The qualification is ready to go, but we have to wait until some registered training organisations actually get in on their scope (registered to deliver it).

It does look mostly electrical, because it is aimed at getting someone competent to do any electrical work in the turbine, under the various licensing regimes in place around the country. So the qualification is structured with lots of basic wiring and electrical units in its core, with electives covering off specific turbine knowledge, safety courses such as safe work at heights and vertical rescue, some mechanical skills, and extra stuff that can be good such as High Voltage switching.

What does it mean practically?

It means that the wind industry now has access to federal and state funding to run most of the training that a wind turbine technician will need, and has a nice framework

It doesn’t mean that there will all of a sudden be a wind turbine technician training course available for school leavers. At least in the short term, this qualification will likely only be delivered by the industry to currently employed technicians.

So how will it work?

Currently the industry employees mostly tradesmen to be technicians, either electricians or some form of mechanical trade. This will continue to happen, but the significant training effort that is required to turn either an electrician or a fitter into a turbine technician, will be covered by the qualification.

So, the qualification has both electrical and mechanical elements, and so an electrician starting as a wind turbine technician, would get some recognition of prior learning for the electrical parts of the qualification, while completing various mechanical, wind turbine specific, or High Voltage units, in order to get the qual. A fitter on the other hand, will focus mostly on the electrical units in the qualification, but on getting it, would be competent to work on the electrical systems in a turbine.

The qualification is structured so that the industry can have apprenticeships, but the details of this are still to be worked out, as are any licensing outcomes of the course. I am keen to develop an apprenticeship program in the wind industry, but this will take a little more time – we need providers, as well as having the apprenticeship registered, and the licensing outcomes agreed.

I have started the conversation on licensing outcomes with Energy Safe Victoria, but this may be a negotiation that takes time.

So initially, I am working with Mt Gambier Tafe to get the qualification on their scope, and then the first thing to do will be to get the wind technicians in my organisation qualified. Mt Gambier Tafe may wish to deliver the program outside the industry, and that wouldn’t make me unhappy, but it is up to them.

Happy to answer people’s questions on the qualifications, and there is some more information elsewhere on this blog, but now that they are here I may be blogging more regularly about using the qual, and the options for those wanting to enter the industry.