Course outlines tend to be lists of topics with no indication of depth. This is the content, in build order, with the parts that take longest marked as such.
The order below is the order a real system gets built in, which is also the order that makes the material stick. Anything described as taking longer is where course time and your revision time should go.
The site survey: orientation and tilt, shading assessed through the year rather than at the moment you visited, roof structure and age, the condition of the existing electrical service, where the inverter and disconnects will physically live, and how a crew gets up there safely. A survey that misses one of these produces a quote that loses money.
Module layout against available area and obstructions. Racking systems and their span tables. Attachment to rafters, trusses or steel, and the difference that makes. Wind and snow loading, which in Canada is not an afterthought. Flashing and penetration detail — this is the part that produces callbacks years later, because a leak appears long after the installer has gone. Expansion, thermal movement, and why clamps are torqued to a figure rather than tight.
Series and parallel configuration and what each does to voltage and current. Matching a string to the inverter's input voltage window across the site's full temperature range — the single most important calculation in PV work. Conductor selection and ampacity with the derating that applies. Routing, securing and protecting DC conductors on a roof. Rapid shutdown and module-level electronics where they are required. Polarity, and the consequences of getting it wrong.
String against microinverter against optimiser, and the cases for each rather than a preference. Inverter siting, ventilation and service access. AC conductors, overcurrent protection, the point of connection, and the labelling a PV system requires. Net metering and the utility's requirements.
Equipment grounding across a metallic structure on a roof. Bonding paths through racking. Surge and lightning considerations. Arc-fault and ground-fault protection, and what the inverter is doing when it trips.
The sequence, the measurements, and what each one tells you: open-circuit voltage per string against calculated, short-circuit or operating current, insulation resistance, polarity, and the inverter's own start-up behaviour. Documentation and handover — what the owner gets and what the inspector wants to see.
What degrades and how fast. Soiling and when cleaning actually pays. Reading monitoring data to find a string that is underperforming rather than failed. Locating one bad connection in a series circuit spread across a roof — a methodical skill, and the one that separates a technician from a labourer.
Not a module at the start that everyone forgets. Fall protection on a sloped roof, and the fact that an illuminated array cannot be switched off. The safety bundle →
All of it is in both the four-day Fast-Track and the forty-hour self-paced course. The design arithmetic is also drilled in the question bank. What we cannot teach you through a screen is the feel of the work, and we say so on the hands-on page rather than pretend otherwise.
String sizing with temperature correction, by a distance. Second is the mechanical detail around penetrations, because the consequence of getting it wrong appears years later.
The design content is taught against the Canadian Electrical Code. Where a requirement is provincial or utility-specific we say so rather than generalising.
At the level the PV Associate job task analysis requires. Deeper storage work is a separate subject and we are honest about that on the storage page.
Currently none by default: all courses run online, with in-person arranged by region on request. The hands-on page explains exactly what that means for what you will be able to do.
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