Description of task and your duties

We need your help with a long term/ongoing research task assessing local businesses’ potential for solar PV.

This task will support Zero Carbon Evolution, an ambitious strategy developed by MEFL and Moreland City Council to achieve a 22 per cent reduction in carbon emissions across the Moreland community by 2020.

Your duties will be in three parts:

Business sector – commercial – solar assessments

  • Collate primary data (electricity bills and site-specific data)
  • Use an existing MEFL spreadsheet methodology, and third-party software, to calculate/size solar opportunities for select business premises (roofs)
  • Prepare a standard 1-page report for each – highlighting costs and benefits of the system – on findings that MEFL will present to the business

Benchmark and evaluate a new solar assessment methodology

  • Benchmark and evaluate MEFL’s existing solar assessment methodology against a proposed new, updated methodology
  • Compile findings and recommendations in a report for presentation to MEFL staff

Continue business sector – commercial – solar assessments: potentially with the new methodology

  • Prepare a package for training MEFL staff in the use of the new methodology
  • Deliver 1 on 1 training to MEFL staff in the application of the new methodology
  • Continue undertaking business solar assessments with the new methodology
  • Facilitate succession planning, to support training of future volunteers (to be recruited from MEFL’s volunteer database) for ongoing delivery of business solar assessments

Skills required:

  • A background, and/or keen interest, in sustainability within the business sector is desirable.
  • Engineering and/or technically focused volunteers or students are sought due to the technical nature of this work.
  • This volunteer role may suit a student, and could be completed as a student placement, depending on your course requirements. Please check work placement requirements with your course coordinator if you are seeking course credit. Dates and duration can be negotiated to suit course requirements, although the project needs to be completed within the timeframes indicated below.
  • This role may suit more than one volunteer or student working together, depending on your availability.

Dates: To start ASAP, dates of your choosing.

Duration: Three months and then ongoing, depending on your availability.

  • The evaluation, and report, on solar assessment methodologies would ideally be delivered within three months. Then, ad-hoc business solar assessments will be ongoing.
  • A limited number of solar assessments will require a short turn-around (within a couple of days), but generally, assessments can be delivered within a week. Assessments vary in complexity but might take 1 to 2 hours on average.
  • Ad-hoc solar assessments and work on evaluating the new methodology - around 2 days per week.

Location: MEFL offices, Suite 6, Level 1, 200 Sydney Road Brunswick

For more information or to get involved, please call Daniel on 9385 8532 or email daniel@mefl.com.au Because of the longer-term and skilled nature of this role, you may wish to include your CV with your reply, if you haven’t already shared it with us.