anyone have any particular advice for job hunting as a soon-to-be electrical engineering grad specializing in power systems and power electronics? admittedly i probably could be putting more effort than I am right now but I am also finding that a lot of jobs here in Virginia are defense focused (bomb-building) that I'm doing all that I can to avoid. I don't think I found any renewable focused companies that I think I would be a good fit for yet (requirements too high for new grad). I had one internship after junior year at a local electrical utility that I ended up really not liking (barley did anything regardless of my initiative). getting out of Virginia would be really nice and I'm thinkin of somewhere in the pacific northwest area or maybe even europe? long term career wise I want to do something that advances solarpunk in some way shape or form and I need some help figuring out exactly what that would look like. any advice would be appreciated!
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.
๐ Community Highlights ๐
- !fixing@slrpnk.net - Celebrating/talking about repairing stuff, the right to repair stuff, and the intersection of tech and solarpunk ideals.
- !selfhosting@slrpnk.net - Hosting your own services. Preferably at home and on low-power or shared hardware.
- !reclamation@slrpnk.net - A place to discuss and learn about the restoration of disturbed lands to desirable end land uses
๐ธ Meta Post Image: Asante-Akim Center for Non-Motorized Transport ๐๏ธ
People of rural Ghana organized a school for teaching how to chop, weld, and re-assemble bicycles to better meet the needs of rural Africa. The Asante-Akim Center for Non-Motorized Transport takes its inpiration from punk bike chopping groups in the United States and Europe.
These bikes not only look cool, but are better suited to the poor roads and Jungle environment. Photo from ratbikes.org.
๐ World Carfree Day / In town, without my car! Events September 21-28 ๐ด
World Car-Free day is Tuesday September 22nd. At SLRPNK we'd like to draw a little more attention to this holiday, and see it celebrated even more widely and internationally. Like all good holidays, it has its roots in civil disobedience.
In 1961, Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She was one of the organizers of demonstrations that saved a popular public park in New York City from being turned into more road for cars. She was inspired by both the Garden City and City Beautiful movements before her, and her book and methods were internationally influential.
The Netherlands had seen the precursor to car-free days as a response to oil price shocks during the Suez Crisis, and anti-car sentiment has festered due to speeding vehicles in narrow city streets. Late one night in 1968, neighbors in Groningen took pickaxes and shovels to sections of their street to create intentional barriers that cars had to slow to navigate around. Despite official resistance, the civil disobedience movement to create "Woonerfs" or "Living Streets" spread, and in 1972 the first official Woonerf was constructed in Delft.
The Dutch lead the way in re-envisioning cities without cars through the 1970s, but the idea became internationally popular. People began organizing yearly car-free days, with the intention to explore other ways of organizing city life without the use of personal motor vehicles. Car-free days and automobile restraint in Urban planning goes hand in hand.
In one famous case in Jakarta, Indonesia, Car-free day is a weekly event. On Sunday mornings, several streets into the city are barred from use by traffic. They become popular paths for pedestrians and cyclists who come to the city for Sunday events. Initially it was planned to occur only 3 times a year in 2007, but as interest and infrastructure around the event grew, it became a weekly event only 5 years later. The streets used for this purpose have become more pedestrian-friendly as their use by pedestrians grew.
The most popular day for yearly Car-free days is September 22nd. In french-speaking countries, it is called "En ville, sans ma voiture" or "In town, without my car" - but the concept is the same. What ever the concept is called in your locality, we would like to boost it here as a Solarpunk holiday. Check out related communities for this event:
- !urbanism@slrpnk.net
- !utilitycycling@slrpnk.net
- !publictransport@slrpnk.net
- !TacticalUrbanism@slrpnk.net
โ๏ธ Defederation with lemmy.devr.cc โ๏ธ
lemmy.devr.cc was abandoned by its admin and allowed for open sign-ups (no manual review of new applicants), resulting in it being used by advertiser bots and others posting illegal material, necessitating us defederating from it. As it's a small instance with no active communities, the defederation is unlikely to effect any of our users.
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๐ฌ Open Discussion ๐ฌ
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๐๏ธ Meta Archive ๐ฐ
Our Monthly Meta posts are sometimes home to more in-depth sections written by our admins. Many of our newer members may not be familiar with some of the past guides, so for those interested, we've compiled a list below.
- December 2024 - How to Prepare for a Fascist Regime
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I only know the situation in europe, but have you checked TSOs and DSOs? Transmission and distribution system operators have a lot to do in europe to adapt to the renewables and alike. If you like software, you could also take a look at SCADA software companies, they need some application knowledge too, but not sure if a grad is what they might be looking for. At least security critical software is somewhat safe from AI. My last idea would be companies providing control power (called FCR and FRR in europe), they have somewhat a boom due to cheep batteries. However, I know that things are different in the US, so guess I cannot help very much. In my experience however, applying to jobs that seem a bit different from what you are looking for / are skilled for is often fine, because sometimes the company does not know exactly what they want. And if you want to try for europe, do it. Good luck!
As an electrical engineer (electronics and medical focus), moving to Europe is NOT easy. They will not hire anyone not already living in the EU or coming out of the EU university system if you aren't. Work visas are too much work for companies in many countries here. It is quite competivie here now in the shit job market too, so your only change is either do your masters here or risk everything moving for 90 days to a country with no work visa needed for your country (Netherlands is one I think) and pray that you can get a job for a work visa before it expires.
If you are looking at power electronics, look into motor driver manufacturers. Make an FOC BLDC driver for a portfolio project, a solar inverter, some specific-use power distribution (buck, buckboost, 3-phase VRM) modules, etc... Companies want concrete proof that you know how to do your job.
A LOT of jobs (likely like your internship) around energy are very very slow moving jobs that are more paperwork and meetings than engineering.
Look at engineering consulting companies. They are good for building up a breadth of experience for future jobs. Ones that are in-house engineering (not rented out engineers) are best for this.
Look at the companies that actually make the modules inside electrical boxes, industrial electronics, solar inverters, and see if they have any engineering divisions where you are looking and you can always do open applications to them.
The job market is the worst now in decades. I wish you the best of luck! Let me know if you need advice for anything else.
Maybe something wind-power related? Did you check job listings in Canada?
I thought about doing something wind-power related. I did wind team back last semester but I didn't do much. I'm doing it again this semester but I'm still unsure if I will be able to do anything worth noting on my resume (I'll try, though). Canada would be a good idea as well, but not really sure where (Vancouver?). I'll check it out and get back to you later this week.
Skilled workers like yourself are pretty much always in high demand. Don't worry about "lying" on your resume: be honest what "I didn't do much" means, including to yourself. Even just watching more experienced people work is work experience, and it deserves to be on there.
Eventually when you've got more practical experience under your belt you'll remove those internships (or shorten them to a passing mention) but it's normal for new workers to only have internships or even nothing (but you can still include school projects that are interesting in any way for instance)
Good luck!
Hope itโs okay to ask a moderation question here.. Say someone I have blocked (through the official mechanism) or filtered out (via voyager) posted something on a community I mod here on slrpnk. I wouldnโt see their post and would only know something inappropriate was posted if it was reported, correct?
I donโt think my tiny community is at high risk of this but Iโm curious how it works.
The main Lemmy frontend has that "moderator view" option to show all posts regardless of personal blocks. But I don't think the alternative frontends have implemented that.
Ah so to do my job responsibly I should be peaking at the regular front end, good to know thanks!
Just a story to share: my dad's solar panels broke this summer, somehow water got in between the layers and caused water damage to the panel electronics.
As this is a warranty case he's getting the money for it, but his panels are already a few years old, so he can't get the same kind. Instead he bought higher power ones, even though insurance only covers equal power generation. And, because newer panels are less sensitive to the angle with which they face the sun, he also covered the other side of the roof.
He basically quadrupled his local solar power generation which I find pretty cool. It'll come in useful to charge his car and run cooling in summer as well as his heat pump in winter.
Out of curiosity, what company made his system? I assume he had to get new inverters too? Did he do the work himself?
I'm thinking about expanding mine in a couple of years, but will have to jump through hoops both with Enphase (who made my system) but also with my utility (they have to permit any changes). But thinking about doing it DIY.
DIY is very doable, especially the PV panel side, as that is really standardized. The main issue is building a strong roof mount.
Surely the rail mounting system they all seem to use is available somewhere, right? I haven't looked into it yet but I was basically just going to copy the pros' homework.
Yeah, but super expensive (typically cost more than the panels they hold) and you still need to find a way to connect it to the underlaying roof structure, which depending on the type and age of the roof isn't easy (and can compromise rain proofness).
Damn, guess I never looked that closely at the itemized parts for my install (if there even was one). Any idea why it's so expensive? You know of any good alternatives?
The pros did a good job on mine, new roof and no sign of leaks yet. Of course, I'm not a pro, so maybe I do need to look for other options.
No idea, maybe the long length makes it costly to transport?
I improvised my own solution from off the shelf metal fittings, but it was honestly a huge PITA and took ages. But I have an old, badly build roof with ceramics tiles, so that added to the difficulty. No "pro" wanted to touch that, so I had to DIY it.
Well good on you for making it happen! Not sure where you are or the weather, but issues in storms/heavy wind? That'd be my concern here in the Midwest US (we get a few nasty squalls a year).
Hopefully a little ground-mount plug-in option will be available soon, if my state can bother to pass a bill allowing plug-in solar. Even two extra kW would be nice to have, and it's DIY by design. I talked about it in another comment in this thread, but I'm hoping to put them over my raised garden beds, make more use of verticality but also diffused light is apparently really good for plants (a little at-home agrivoltaics).
Do you have any experience with plug-in + roof mounted solar on the same home? I'm told it's technically possible, just not common.
Do you have any experience with plug-in + roof mounted solar on the same home? Iโm told itโs technically possible, just not common.
I see no reason why two entirely separate systems feeding into the same grid connected home circuit should be a problem. Only on island systems with no grid connection there could be issues.
๐ค
I will come back and share my findings if/when it happens.
Not sure which company it was, I gotta ask him, but I assume it's a smaller local installer. The HEMS is from Smartfox.
He's too old to do something like this on his own and it took them longer than he liked, but now they're done and it's coming online.
I assume the expansion would've been more complicated if the panels didn't need to be replaced anyway.
I personally don't like the HEMS runs via SIM cards when it's actually a very local, just on the roof. A completely locally controlled system would be more Solarpunk.
None seem to be perfect, but my Enphase system is connected via Ethernet (it still has a SIM for backup) and can be accessed locally if the internet is down entirely. Still, it's not without its issues. Just yesterday I was reading about someone's backup battery on the fritz because of a bad update. Your dad's can't connect to his Wi-Fi or anything? Is the SIM just good indefinitely?
Full local (with the option to connect for periodic firmware updates, because there are always bugs to fix and improvements to be made) would be great... but we can take the solarpunk to another level if we learn how to gut the firm and soft in these things, replace it all with self-made/open source alternatives, and flip the bird to the corps who barely want to upkeep their existing systems since there's no money in it.
As usual I'm just happy to be here and grateful for all the admins hard work. I'm also on like 2 other instances and this is the one I actually feel connected with. It's also the first instance I joined during the great Reddit migration a few years back.
New here and also enjoying it! Hope it continues to grow and be more active with time.
It's already grown so much since I started. I love it. Also shameless promotion, if you came from Reddit !nolawns@slrpnk.net is here as well, I run both the Reddit and here. Feel free to check it out.
Oh I'm already in, on both platforms! I'm slowly but surely converting my grassy hellscape, it's only like a fifth of an acre but I'm trying to go the permaculture/food forest route. A little more ornamental in the front than the back, but it's come a long way since I started.
Front yard: planted a native tree, expanded an existing bed with 20+ natives and berry bushes, added two large mulch beds with native plants and large ornamental rocks. Gutter-fed rain barrel, statically watering our busiest bed with a soaker hose. Plan to add a rain garden to capture some runoff from a drainage trench running down the side of the yard, plus a hang out spot with seating and a fire pit, ringed in plants.
Side yard: my "rewilding" project, a narrow corridor between my carport and fence. I've boxed it off and sewn it with native seeds and other ornamental varieties, sunflowers took off the most this year but I'm going to keep chucking things at it until it's basically an impassibly tall prairie. Two more rain barrels here, one with a soaker hose that runs through and the other that I use to fill watering cans.
Back yard: built a wooden platform patio, two large-ish raised beds, two apple trees (they've been having a rough go of it), and two greenhouses (a small one that's more of a staging area for seeds before they go into the large beds, and a bigger one where I hope to grow some hardier plants year round). The greenhouse also lets me capture yet more water. I have three more in-ground no till beds planned, maybe next year. I had some sun diffusion shades up that my plants seemed to love, but a tree branch took the larger of the two out during a storm a couple weeks ago, so I'll have to replace that next year. If plug-in solar gets passed in my state, I might install some panels over my beds to get a little agrivoltaic action going. Not really related to the concept, but also hoping to squeeze in a hot tub in one corner. ๐
I love this! I just recently moved so I'm in the "why is this broken Jesus I need to fix these 3 things too?!" Phase of owning this house. Hoping next year to rip out the overgrown non native shrubs and start a small native pollinator garden and go from there. There's like 3 Wild Ones chapters near me and several places that sell native only plants. I'm early excited about getting back into all this.
I hear you. In just the last month we've had a run of bad luck: tree branch tearing down our service line (some siding repair $$ + tree needs trimmed & cabled $$$$), failed water heater (upgraded to heat pump $$$$), and overwhelmed sump pump causing slight basement flooding ($$$ DIY plus a lot of headache). We'd hoped to progress with our plans more this year but it's just not in the cards.
However, something I'll say that saves a lot of money is propagation instead of buying new plants. Get cuttings from friends and neighbors, some rooting hormone, and just make new plants. Even adding a few to your yard can make a big difference for the pollinators!
Yeah that definitely is a great money saver for sure!
People of rural Ghana organized a school for teaching how to chop, weld, and re-assemble bicycles to better meet the needs of rural Africa
That welder is as punk as it gets:
I bet you feel the hair raise on your skin being within 10 feet of that. It's so cool
Anyone taking any solarpunk actions this month?
Weโre excited to be getting a battery for our solar system installed, and just today Iโve made new connections through my community time bank (Iโm going to be officiating a non-traditional wedding, and possibly getting a much-needed haircut).
My solarpunk action this month is to imagine and write about my own personal solarpunk utopia. How the solarpunk future will look in my own life. I feel a big need for radical and creative hope at the moment.
And appreciate the solarpunk things I already get to experience, like powering my electric bike and making tea from the solar panels in my garden with my daughter.
Hell yeah! That's part of what drew me to solarpunk too, the hopefulness of it. I see the world drifting further and further into a cyberpunk dystopia and it makes me want to say "nope, we can do better." To me, solarpunk is that vision (even if it starts out as fiction) and the acts (small or large) of creating that brighter future in spite of the forces pulling in the opposite direction.
In a culture increasingly addled with AI slop and sanitized "commercially viable" visions of the future, taking the time to create art like yours for yourself and for its own sake is an act of defiance. That AND choosing an electric bike over oil-powered propulsion AND making tea with the power of the sun? Solarpunk as hell. โ
Also our tomato plants are popping off, new to gardening (first year getting anything usable out of it) and Iโm DELIGHTED. Had some on a grilled egg and cheese sandwich with mayo for lunch today, it was edible art.
Hell yeah, tomato harvests are new to me as well, relatively. It's been super addicting to maximize my garden yield in my small space as the years go by. I'm growing shit loads of San Marzano, Sweet 100, and red jewel varieties this year. It's a good year.
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I love the continuity highlights in the monthly discussions. I feel like I get a new community to subscribe to every month.
Once again, thank you for running the place for us.
hey folks! just joined today! :) i'm scott (he/him), a soon-to-graduate electrical engineering student specializing in power systems (with a sprinkle of green energy stuff) desperately trying to find a renewables job or anything vaguely solarpunk-adjacent haha. im interested in diy, self-hosting, and food growing at home (specifically hydroponics). i've also been getting into art/illustration as of late. been lurking for some time now and im looking forward to getting involved!
Welcome here, and please share some of your projects on the respective communities you mentioned.
Is there a solarpunk mini-fiction community? I was thinking of something like 365 tomorrows, but Solarpunk.
We have !fiction@slrpnk.net and !writing@slrpnk.net, either of which would likely welcome your short stories :)
To find other local communities we have, be sure to take a look at our communities page ^^
Thanks. Strange that, I'm using photon and the search didn't turn anything up. Seems browsing communities is the go.
I'd love some context for that sweet bike in the photo.
The context is in the Meta Post Image section, below community highlights :)
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May have beed asked already but what is the relationship between f-hub and slrpnk?
I see the donations are related, so is it hosted/maintained by the same people?
Yes. Well the history is that I (the current main technical admin here) was working on non-fediverse community hosting efforts mainly related to FOSS game development communities (since the early 00s). Sometimes in the late 10s we also started experimenting with fediverse software like Hubzilla, but it never got very far.
But at some point the original founder of SLRPNK (who got free hosting from the Lemmy devs in the early days), wanted to shut down or hand over the site and as I was already helping out as a moderator since some months, we agreed that I would take over the site.
Given that I was now administrating multiple sites with a much broader scope (also an unrelated Akkoma instance) and was interested in also hosting a federated git forge, the idea came up to start a more technical umbrella org that f-hub.org aims to be. Practically it isn't anything official though and just composed of me and some occasional volunteer contributors. Maybe I will try to turn it into some sort of worker's cooperative in the future, but that is unlikely to happen any time soon.
f-hub should really be renamed the ExxonMobil Holding Corporation so that if the US imposes sanctions on it, as just happened to an Italian operation, the silly pattern matching implementation of those sanctions completely trips up a fossil fuels firm.
That would be kinda amazing
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Thank you for another month of fantastic information. Iโm learning a lot thanks to these communities, trying each day to reimagine ways to use things and self host. For the next two months Iโm taking a course to install and maintain solar panels, something I was really looking forward to !!!
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