Toshiyuki WataraiGM,
Engineering Division

Joy of learning

RENOVA is the third company I have worked for. I was previously involved in business such as the wind power and solar for a manufacturer and so I was not completely new to the renewables field. My actual job involved electrical and civil engineering planning and design, as well as project management, including onsite construction, and I really feel I gained a wide range of experience.
But I aspired to move beyond specific energy sources and to use my skills to develop this world’s cutting-edge technologies. Which is why my heart leapt when I saw RENOVA’s website. RENOVA is trying to use a wide range of energy sources to develop renewables and, above all, its business scale is incredibly big. Thinking that the skill I gained at my first employer in the operation of large-scale systems might also be useful at RENOVA, I daringly changed jobs.

By nature, I like to take on new challenges and, faced with an impenetrable problem, it excites me to find a path to a solution and to then advance along this path bit by bit.
Since joining RENOVA, my wish has come true and I have been involved in the frontline of development of multiple energy sources including solar and wind power. I am also frequently considering technologies that have never been used in Japan before. All the steps are so difficult that I have never encountered them before in my previous jobs. But this is why I enjoy it. Every time a problem arises, I consider it with the other team members and we identify the best solution in each case. It is precisely this process that makes me feel we are using our skills to develop cutting-edge solutions.

Pooling our knowledge
in search of
the optimal solutions

And so since I joined RENOVA, I have much more opportunities to exchange opinions with other members. I have also been made aware that previous comments I made were based on biased views stemming from past experiences of success. Though tough, I am stimulated in various ways by members with different backgrounds and I find joy in learning.

You may get the impression that we do business by groping our way forward in the dark but this is not the case. Through intuition based on specialist knowledge and experience, we build strong hypotheses and steadily inch our way forward guided by these hypotheses. If the hypothesis or the hypothesis testing process is inadequate, then engineer’s intuition or some such thing kicks in and I sense that something is wrong.
When I discuss this candidly with the other team members, oddly enough, the other members have also sensed that something is wrong. In this case, we immediately revise the hypothesis or the hypothesis testing process and then proceed again. The process through which members bring their high levels of expertise into the mix and pool their knowledge in search of the optimal solution is a lot of fun.

I think RENOVA is a company suited to engineers who have a challenging spirit and are constantly looking for something new. If you are someone who is not prepared to give up on your dreams and aspirations and strongly believes in realizing them, then I think RENOVA is the perfect environment for you.

Toshiyuki WataraiGM, Engineering Division

Joined in 2017

Interview