My Journey in Solar Energy

From Student Worker to Automation Lead

I joined MBG Energy while I was still a student and started in photovoltaic planning and drafting. Over time, I moved deeper into the technical side of the work, not only producing plans but also understanding how the whole workflow functioned behind them. As my responsibilities grew, I gradually shifted from planner and drafter into a lead role focused on automation, workflow development, and team enablement.

Seeing the Gaps, Building the System

Working inside the planning and development section made the inefficiencies very visible. Many recurring tasks depended on repetitive manual inputs, disconnected naming systems, and CAD steps that had to be repeated again and again. After seeing how much time and energy the team was losing, I proposed a more structured automation approach to management and defined a role around it myself: reducing manual workload, improving consistency, and building a connected internal system instead of isolated fixes.

Making Solar Logic Understandable

In photovoltaic planning, one of the central technical tasks is organizing how solar modules are electrically connected into strings. These strings affect not only the electrical design, but also the way information must appear across drawings, labels, tables, and project documentation. To make this process more reliable, I developed SolarHelp as an internal planning ecosystem that connected these string-related topics into one structured workflow. It helped align calculations, naming logic, sticker plans, string tables, and text outputs so that technical information stayed consistent across the planning process instead of being handled separately and manually.

Building Tools Inside Allplan

A major part of this work was creating custom tools in Allplan Visual Scripting and Python. Inside the Visual Scripting environment, I developed tools step by step based on the CAD team’s real daily problems. These included automation around text outputs, attribute handling, labeling, formatting logic, coordinate-based outputs, custom nodes, and workflow tools that reduced repeated drafting actions and made drawing production more stable and scalable.

From CAD Automation to Operational Systems

Beyond the Allplan tools themselves, I also worked on broader operational systems. This included a timeline and resource management tool, as well as helping implement the string system into the databank so that planning information could be stored, structured, and reused more reliably. In this way, the work expanded from CAD automation into a wider framework for process improvement across planning and operations.

Growing the Team Behind the Tools

Alongside the technical side of my role, I also became increasingly involved in building the team environment around it. This ranged from contributing to recruiting strategy for the CAD team and taking part in interviews, to onboarding new colleagues and helping them adapt more quickly to the workflows and standards we were developing. Over time, my role in enablement expanded beyond training into supporting team cohesion more broadly, including knowledge sharing, day-to-day guidance, and even helping organize team events to strengthen collaboration and culture.