What will you do as a Solar Proto Engineer?
As a Solar Proto Engineer, you will become part of the Solar Engineering Domain. In this role you work closely with solar researchers providing electrical and mechanical prototyping support and aiding in indoor and outdoor experiments.
As a Solar Proto Engineer you will have the following tasks and responsibilities:
Conceiving and creating custom solutions for performing a wide variety of electrical and mechanical measurements or manipulations on PV modules;
Provide hands on support for custom module production, make samples, prepare modules and run tests;
Become an active team member of relevant research projects at Lightyear and provide necessary technical support towards the successful completion of the projects;
Communicate planned experiments and required equipment with the engineering team;
Affinity with process engineering is a plus.
A day as a Solar Proto Engineer
Let's start by saying Lightyear is very flexible in terms of your working hours. In this role, it is expected you will be in our offices in Venray a minimum of 4 days a week.
You join the standup with the team and discuss what you have done in the lab yesterday, and give an update of your planned lamination and testing for today. During the stand-up, your colleague mentioned they are having trouble with a test set-up, and asks for your help, you agree to make time in the afternoon to support with his problem.
After the standup, you check on your emails, and respond to an internal chat message you have received where your input is needed for some new projects.
Fully awake, you now begin the layup of today's prototypes you will be making. You have some of the materials already prepared from yesterday, and as you are preparing the samples luckily, one of your colleagues offers you a hand to make the process even more streamlined. While you work on the prototypes and test samples together, you brainstorm together about some of the challenges you are facing in another project. You make good progress in this discussion and get your prototypes processing just in time for lunch.
After lunch, you begin the afternoon by taking the test samples you prepared this morning and conducting peel tests on these samples. You make sure the tests are performed to specific standards and log all data, which you will process once all tests have been carried out. Following some update meetings with colleagues, you check out some datasheets and documentation to learn more about a specific communication protocol used by a new piece of equipment.
Then, before finishing for the day, you grab another caffeinated beverage with your colleagues and have a chat about how the day went, not because you have to, but because it’s a nice way to end the day!