On the Roof
Season 1
From Wind to Wire
by Yehuda Gittleson
Most people assume Yehuda Gittelson grew up wanting to work in solar. He didn't. He grew up in Bangor, studied mechanical engineering at UMaine, and took a job doing wind farm site assessments in Aroostook County because it was the renewable energy work that existed. When that ended, he drove south to Portland, got hired as a junior installer, and learned the trade from the roof down. This episode traces the full arc, from a college lecture hall to a wind ridge near the Canadian border to a rooftop in South Portland, and what he figured out along the way about the gap between a good energy resource and a working energy system.
Yehuda Gittelson is a solar installer based in Portland, Maine. In this first episode, he explains what the show is and what it isn't, how he got from a mechanical engineering degree to wind farm development in Aroostook County to residential solar installation across southern Maine, and what the job actually looks like from the roof up. No panels, no pundits. Just the work.