A little bit about my internship.
First week of internship
site tourin the first day, we did a site tour of the facility and it has many offices, one conference room and my favorite place of the whole building, the warehouse. |
my first hands-on learnig activityThis activity is called cable stripping and the objective of this activity was to strip 1 inch pieces of plastic that wrapped around the copper and leave a small gap in-between them. We did this until we finished the whole wire. |
reviewing important informationIn the mornings, me and some trainees would be taught information that was very valuable and the content that was taught was many different math formulas, we went over safety rules, and many concepts about electricity. |
Second week of internship
On Wednesday, we went to the convention center and we saw many types of batteries, modules (solar panels), and overall just new technology that hasn't been released to the public. This event was pretty interesting and there was also a competition called Solar Games and this was a competition over which team can do a whole solar panel installation the fastest. Our team ended up winning and are in the Semi finals. Hopefully they win and the grand prize is ten thousand dollars I'm pretty sure.
2nd day at convention center
On the second day of being at the convention center for the solar games which was a Thursday, we went more later which was around 1:30 to see our team compete in the solar games. We first stopped at a site visit and then we went directly to the convention center for this event. Our team made it to the semi finals but unfortunately got knocked after the match.
Week 3 of my internship
On week 3 of my internship experience, I stayed indoors a lot more due to the rain and instead we practiced inside the warehouse and packed up the van because we were going to a site visit all the way in a Indian reservation an hour away so we had to make sure we had everything we needed before we headed over there tomorrow.
As you can see in the first pic, I was practicing my conduit bending since this was what I still needed practice and improvement on. On the second picture, you can see the van being packed with the necessary equipment and tools for the site visit on Tuesday. I was in charge of making sure we had the right wires and the right amount and the other volunteers were in charge of making sure we had everything we needed to install the solar panels.
On Thursday, the office had a team retreat and I have decided to put this on my blog because this was a great time to learn about GRID Alternatives outside of the office and we started by first eating breakfast, then talked and discussed about the company and what the company's goal was and how can the company continue to grow. after the discussion, we headed off to lunch and got some really good sandwiches and the best part about it was how it was close to the beach and we ate near the beach and were attacked by seagulls wanting our food.
week 4 of my internship
On the fourth week of my internship, I went to a site visit in El Cajon for an installation on Tuesday to start the week. Then we spent the following days in the office studying for the OSHA10 certificate which I ended up getting in the end after taking a test on Friday and passing.
As you can see in this picture, we were at the job site early in the morning around 7:30 unloading the tools and materials. Before we started working, we did a couple of stretch exercises and got our safety gear on that consists of a hard hat, work gloves, and safety glasses. after that, our roof team went up the roof to measure and put clamps, then we started unpacking the rails, and then the solar panels. This time, we unpacked 14 solar panels which was kind of heavy. This job took about two days to finish and here we actually learned that as soon as the sun hits the solar panel, it instantly worked and we made sure of this with a multimeter when we connected the positive end with positive and negative with negative.
A little more about the OSHA10 certification and what the purpose of learning this was to make sure we know our rights for our safety and its basically a ten hour class where you also learn how you can be safe. we took this class on Thursday and actually finished on Friday. Fortunately, I studied and passed the twenty five question quiz and receiving a certificate or a card that shows I'm certified and have had OSHA10 classes.
