Sean Fritzler snapped his 13-pound climbing harness onto a metal cable and clambered 260 rungs up four ladders to the top of a wind turbine as tall as the observation deck on the Statue of Liberty’s crown.
Fritzler reveled in the lofty solitude afforded by the nation’s fastest-growing occupation as he popped open the nacelle hatch. The 15-by-30-foot space was crammed with equipment that makes electricity from wind captured by blades that sweep a vertical area as long as a soccer field.
“My office is 300 feet in the air,” said Fritzler, 25, one of five GE Renewable Energy technicians who service 56 turbines at a wind farm on the eastern Colorado prairie. “Everything about this job is interesting.”
Demand and intense competition for mechanical daredevils like Fritzler are accelerating as states eschew fossil fuels for renewable energy. Wind-turbine service technicians, who must work at extreme heights during temperamental weather, occupy a job category projected to expand more than any other through 2024, outpacing health care and technology, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Congress ensured wind would remain the nation’s quickest-growing source of electricity when it approved a five-year extension of tax credits for the industry in December. States are also fueling the gains.
Wind provided 19 percent of the power Xcel Energy sent to Colorado customers in 2015. Xcel and providers in Texas and Iowa drew as much as two-thirds of their power at any one time from the country’s 49,000-turbine fleet last year.
Construction is underway on 81 projects in 25 states. A record 74,512 megawatts of wind energy, enough to power 20 million average homes, is online as of the end of the first quarter.
Companies are competing fiercely to hire technicians to keep the power coming. Most are snapped up before they even collect a diploma. Fritzler was hired before he graduated from Northeastern Junior College in Sterling in 2011. He was 20.
Five firms recently approached Andrew Swapp, the director of wind energy technology training at Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, N.M., to court the 27 students in the class of 2016.
Some Mesalands students are former oil and gas industry workers who were among 87,000 handed pink slips in 2015 amid stagnant crude prices. The utilities sector, including the wind and solar industries, hired the second-highest share of out-of-work roughnecks in 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Turbine service technicians took home a $53,030 annual mean wage, more than their counterparts on oil derricks, who earned $52,680, according to a May 2015 report from BLS.
GE is constantly recruiting to avoid a technician shortage, said Andy Holt, general manager for North America wind for GE Renewable Energy. Holt’s division employs or contracts with firms for 1,200 technicians in the U.S.
“They are our front line — they are industrial athletes,” Holt said. “It’s hard to find them.”
