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How do I enter the renewable energy industry?

If you want to start a career in big data for the energy sector, is it better to learn big data first (in any industry) or to go into the energy industry first (e.g. in management consulting)?

  • I'm a recent engineering Ph.D., and am excited about applying analytics to big data in the energy industry. I'm curious to hear your opinions on whether it might be better to start on that path as a big data specialist or as an industry specialist.

  • Answer:

    "Big Data" (whatever that means to you BTW) is an ill-defined name for a trend that includes large scale data storage and approaches to data analysis that involve massively parallel systems making use of Map/Reduce.   At least, that's what I think it means. Ask any business owner what Big Data means and they will give you one of a thousand answers to the question some simply suggesting the use of a rather large Excel spreadsheet.   My point here is that Big Data is nothing to base a career on, a career that has to last you a few decades. Energy?  Now that's something to base a career on.  Last I checked the human race had been using energy since the dawn of the species.  I'm quite certain we're going to continue to depend on it for some time to come. Big Data?  Which, in reality is just another way of saying Hadoop or an equivalent, is an interesting technology which may or may not be front page news in the coming years.      It's just another kind of database.    If you wanted someone to help you create a database of energy sources, which one would you hire: One of a million people that understands how a databases works, OR One of 2000 people that understands both databases and the energy sector.

Tim O'Brien at Quora Visit the source

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I work in the Data Analysis and Visualization group at the National Renewable Energy Lab. We do data analysis on energy data of varying sizes. While it's true that we would prefer to hire someone with both energy expertise and big data (or another technical skill) expertise, it's never part of our actual hiring decision. If you want to do big-data and do it in the energy industry, you're easiest in is through a specific, technical skill, aka big data. We hire on a mix of current, specifically applicable skills and the ability to learn new ones. For most of us, one of those new skills is eventually domain expertise, but we don't look for it when hiring new people; we overwhelmingly prefer technical experts for technical positions, such as people to work with big data. Once you're surrounded by domain experts, being the smart, quick-learner you were hired to be, you'll pick up the rest quick enough. (And that's where you can apply Tim O'Brien's excellent advice to build a career on an industry instead of a technology.)

Dylan Hettinger

Hi, I think you should go to the energy industry first for experience, as it is the place where you will be implementing Big data. So you should invest more time there. Big Data however doesn't require programming experience(just a little bit of core java) or much of your time. You can learn the same in 30 hours, from online learning Platforms like  http://www.wiziq.com/course/21308-hadoop-big-data-training

Shruti Garg

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