Human resources for PV market growth: A tool for PV market expansion in Argentina

There is a measure of agreement that the size of the PV market in South America, particularly in Argentina, is far from its potential and that much larger market sizes can be developed if the barriers to the adoption of PV technology can be promptly addressed. While evidence suggests growing Government interest in Renewable Energy and significant private initiatives in PV industry in San Juan, a privileged area in terms of irradiation, the relatively small size of the human resource pool stands as a major barrier to adoption of PV. In this paper, we describe the effort made by the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional in Argentina (UTN) to develop an engineering workforce that can translate policy challenges into specific technology-based, Renewable Energy (RE) projects including not only Solar Power, but also Wind Power and Biomass.