About

Greenlight Energy is me, Mark Gerrard. I’ve been working in the solar PV industry for the last two & a half years so you could say I’m a relative new-comer, but I’ve been through a lot of industry changes and picked up some info along the way that you might find useful.

When I started working in the industry at the beginning of 2009 I installed grid-connect PV systems for the first few months – this was before you needed to be a licensed electrician to be an installer (I worked with a sparky who did all the LV wiring). I then moved into the operations side of the business organising installations, supplies, subbies etc. which was a lot more fun but had its own challenges. As the business got bigger it made sense for an electrician to be looking after the operations and installers so I moved sideways into tech support, helping the sales guys and customer service staff deal with customer enquiries.

After the end of June 2011 things changed once again in the solar industry. Systems became more expensive because of changes in government policy and a cap was put on the size of PV systems eligible for the feed-in-tariff here in Queensland (from 30 kW down to 5 kW). Sales dried up and the company I was working for ended up laying off 30% of its staff and I was one of them.

I did an Adv. Dip. Renewable Energy at the Sunshine Coast Tafe (Queensland, Australia) and have Clean Energy Council accreditation for designing off-grid & on-grid solar PV systems.

I also have an IT background so it’s a good time to try something different while I wait for the solar industry to once again flourish in this country (maybe in another 12 – 18 months?). In the meantime I hope you get something useful out of my ramblings.

If you have any questions or just want to say hi you can email me.