Solar Photovoltaic Installer
You install solar panels on roofs and on the ground, wire them up, and connect them to the electrical system. It's outdoor construction work with an electrical component.
What Tuesday looks like
You meet at the shop at 6:30 a.m., load the truck — panels, racking, inverters, conduit, your tool bag. Drive 45 minutes to a single-family home in the suburbs. The homeowner is friendly but wants to chat too long while you're trying to set up. You're on the roof by 8, harnessed in. The shingles are already hot. You drill into the rafters to mount the racking, snap chalk lines, lift 40-pound panels up a ladder one at a time with your partner. By 11 you've got half the array up. Lunch in the truck with the AC on full. Afternoon is wiring — running conduit down the side of the house, landing connections in the combiner box. You miss a torque spec and have to redo a lug. You're back at the shop by 5, dirty, sunburned across the neck again because you forgot sunscreen. Tomorrow: a commercial install across town.
Career profile
Career shape
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In the landscape
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Salary range
No salary data
10-yr growth
+22%
Reward profile
3 quick questions to see how this career fits the way you work.
What school costs — and when it pays off
Certificate program · A short training program — usually done in under a year.
The chart shows your annual salary over time alongside the annual loan repayment. The shaded band at the bottom is what goes to the loan each year — when it disappears, your full salary is yours.
School cost fully covered by year 7, with strong earnings well beyond that.
Entry-level salary
$43K
25th percentile — what most people start at
Experienced salary
$60K
75th percentile — after ~10 years in the field
School & training cost
$8K
+ $3K interest over 10 yrs
Loan paid off
Year 11
$91/mo for 10 years
First year of work
After loan's paid (yr 11)
Salary range reflects 25th–75th percentile nationally, growing from entry-level to experienced over 10 working years. School costs are national averages — yours will vary. Loan assumes you borrow the full amount at 6.54% interest, repaid over 10 years. Monthly figures are pre-tax.
The first years
Year 1: Helper / Apprentice Installer
You're the guy carrying panels up the ladder, holding the other end of the tape measure, and sweeping up scraps at the end of the day. You're making around $17–20/hr, getting yelled at when you grab the wrong wrench, and learning what racking, MC4 connectors, and torque specs actually are. Your body hurts in places you didn't know existed, and you'll either quit in the first 90 days or start to actually enjoy being on a roof. Most companies will pay for you to start a solar PV certificate (NABCEP Associate) on the side.
Year 2–3: Installer
You've got your certificate, you know the systems, and you're the one running the chalk lines and mounting racking without being told. Pay bumps to around $22–28/hr depending on your market. You're trusted to wire DC strings, land connections in the combiner box, and troubleshoot when a panel reads wrong. You're still outside in 95-degree heat or freezing wind, but you're fast now, and the new helpers are the ones lugging panels up the ladder.
Year 3–4: The Fork in the Road
You've hit the ceiling on pure install work. To keep growing your pay, you have to pick a lane: go deeper into the electrical side (start logging hours toward an electrician's license, which means night school and 4+ more years), become a crew lead/foreman on the install side, or jump into commercial/utility-scale work where the systems are bigger and the pay is better but you're on the road a lot. Each path changes your life pretty differently — electrician means classroom time and a bigger long-term ceiling; foreman means you stay in install but deal with scheduling, customers, and other people's mistakes; utility-scale means living out of hotels.
Decision point
Do you stack an electrician's license on top of your solar skills (highest long-term pay, years of school), move up to crew lead/foreman (more money now, more headaches), or chase utility-scale work (good pay, lots of travel)?
Year 5–7: Crew Lead, Journeyman, or Specialist
Whatever you picked, you're now the person other installers ask questions to. If you went foreman, you're running 2–3 jobs a week, talking to homeowners, signing off on inspections, and making $30–40/hr plus a truck. If you went the electrician route, you're partway through your hours and getting paid more for the same work because you can pull permits and do service upgrades. If you went commercial/utility, you're a lead tech on big arrays, working long stretches away from home. The grind is still real — knees, back, sun — but you're not interchangeable anymore.
Related paths
Master Electrician
Solar installers learn a lot of electrical wiring on the job and often go on to complete a full electrician apprenticeship. Becoming a master electrician opens up much higher pay and broader work.
Wind Turbine Technician
Both are growing renewable-energy trades requiring electrical skills and comfort working at heights or outdoors.