Start off the new year with some solar education. According to The Solar Foundation, and the third annual National Solar Jobs Census report, the U.S. solar industry currently employs 119,016 people. Over the past month alone, the industry has seen a 13.2 percent growth rate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 1 in 230 jobs created nationally during 2012 were created in the solar industry.

In anticipation for training the much needed workforce, Solar Energy International (SEI) offers a professional certificate program out of the Solar Photovoltaic lab facility in Paonia, Colorado and also online. While on-site, hands-on learning is still a core part of the program, students can take their prerequisites online and then finish off the program in the PV lab during the summer.

“We have hundreds of students travel to our world-class Solar Photovoltaic (PV) lab facility in Paonia, Colorado every year. The interest continues to increase every year and we needed to find a way to offer flexible educational opportunities that would allow our students to get their prerequisite course work completed so they could come to the week long hands-on labs in the summer,” said Kathy Swartz, Interim Executive Director for SEI.

“The SEI Online Campus has made this training a reality for thousands of people from all over the world while maintaining SEI’s rigorous quality standards of teaching and learning,” she added.

The 2013 Online Solar Training Schedule is now available and the new session kicks off January 14.