Yesterday saw a surprisingly positive new chapter in California’s net metering saga roll out. PG&E is voluntarily expanding its net metering program in the absence of new legislation that would mandate such a move. PG&E customers can continue to explore solar as a valuable investment for some time to come now–without this move, many were predicting that PG&E would reach its net metering cap by first or second quarter 2010.

The broad situation is this: California electric utilities are rapidly approaching the mandated cap for the percentage of their energy portfolio that can be supplied by the electricity garnered from net-metered solar projects (2.5 percent of peak demand). Once that cap is reached, the utilities are no longer required give home or business owners credit on their electric bill for any net excess electricity generated by their solar panel arrays. PG&E is raising that cap within their own portfolio to 3.5 percent. The reason this comes as such as a surprise is that the utility was one of the strongest voices in opposing a legislated net metering increase earlier this year (failed House bill AB 560).

Net metering is one of the cornerstones of any incentive package for solar, and is a huge part of the reason projects can be financially attractive–in essence, the utility is acting as a giant, completely efficient battery. Net metering ensures that every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by your solar panels is helping offset your grid-purchased electricity, either by directly reducing the amount of energy you need to purchase (because you’re producing it on-site) or by offsetting the energy you do still need to purchase (by means of credit on your bill).

So, to make a short story probably longer than you feel up to reading on a Friday afternoon, PG&E’s announcement yesterday to voluntarily expand their net metering program came as a huge relief to the solar industry, and its timing could not have been more apropos as Solar Power International, the country’s largest solar conference, finished up in Anaheim.

While it doesn’t have the ring or the fame of the Indy 500, the World Solar Challenge can make one promise the Greatest Spectacle in Racing can’t: every single car in the competition is low-emission—because every single car in the competition is powered by the sun. Part of the bigger Global Green Challenge, which also includes a race that pits production vehicles—such as the Tesla Roadster and Honda Civic—against each other, the World Solar Challenge is a competition that sends solar racecars through roughly 1,880 miles of Australian desert, savannah and jungle in a low-emissions race to the finish.

This year’s race started at the city of Darwin and ended at Adelaide four days later, where the team from Japan’s Tokai University took home the gold in the “Tokai Challenger,” a futuristic vehicle sporting solar panels from Sharp and averaging 100.54 km/hr (62.57 miles/hr) over the 29 hours and 49 minutes that it spent on the racetrack. Like the cars from the 37 other teams in the race, Tokai’s wheeled contender looked vaguely like a UFO, with a small, cockpit-style driver’s seat and a large flat surface sporting a large array of solar panels. In second place was the Nuon team from the Netherlands, who had won the past four World Solar Challenges, and the team from the University of Michigan went home with third.

The World Solar Challenge 2009 winners (Credit: Global Green Challenge)

Though the contenders are all smiles in the pictures, the competition isn’t all frivolous fun and games. The idea behind the World Solar Challenge (and its umbrella competition, the Global Green Challenge) can ultimately pack a punch:

The World Car Challenge was inspired by a cross-Australia run adventurer Hans Tholstrup made in a solar car, “Quiet Achiever,” in 1982. The first organized event in 1987 was a celebrated one, open to all, and famously won by General Motors’ “Sunraycer.” That car (which looks much as the racers do today) was partly built by AeroVironment and its brilliant founder, Paul MacCready, and the collaboration led to future GM work on what became the EV-1 electric car.

In Anaheim this week, the country’s largest business-to-business solar conference has kept more than 25,000 attendees busy with more than 900 exhibitors. One can feel a little lost trying to navigate among the different sections: solar panel and inverter manufacturers, state solar associations, solar training groups, and of course solar installers fill up nearly 204,000 square feet of exhibit hall.

SPI 2009 is about double the size of last year’s conference–in 2008, that was quite hard to picture, large and vibrant as the conference was. But a doubling of the size has diminished rather than exacerbated the mayhem of a show this large: it’s well structured, and attendees seem to be easily navigating the myriad channels of workshops, sessions, and exhibitors.

And of course it hasn’t all been work, work, work. With strong sponsorship from Sharp Solar, LDK Solar, the Department of Energy’s EERE, Southern California Edison, and others, SPI09 was able to throw a bash for attendees at nearby Disneyland (in Adventure Land, in fact), and after hours and private receptions have kept the networking going far past the official 6pm end of each day’s show. Last night, doors stayed open for the public until 8:30 as well, drawing in the solar curious as well as many local solar professionals.

Presented by SEPA and SEIA annually since 2004, Solar Power International has grown at a rate of about 40 percent per year. Next year’s event will be held in Los Angeles. SPI09 has been a roaring success, capturing the optimistic and market-savvy mood 0f the solar industry right now. We look forward to seeing what another year of development and growth will mean to the industry.

What a week for smart grid! Not only did President Obama announce the lucky recipients of over $3.4 billion of stimulus funding for electrical grid upgrades, but news began to trickle out of California that the state’s first smart grid legislation (Senate Bill 17) was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger.

The policy is the first of its kind to be passed by a state in order to advance the progress of updating our electrical grid. The bill requires the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to outline a specific smart grid deployment plan by July 2010. In addition, all electric utilities with more than 100,000 customers must submit a smart grid strategy plan by July 1, 2011. Wanting to help California meet its aggressive renewable energy targets, State Senator Alex Padilla (D- San Fernando Valley) sponsored the bill with the hopes of implementing an advanced and digitalized electrical grid to deliver cleaner power in a more efficient and reliable way.

With SB 17 in place, a 21st century grid could be realized in California within the next five to ten years, allowing for a fundamental change in the way we think about, and use, electricity. It would also help jump start a new energy economy, creating green technologies and green collar jobs.

Strong renewable energy mandates, clean tech financing from Silicon Valley, and utilities ahead of the game with smart grid initiatives (like SCE) position California as a leader with regard to deploying smart grid technologies. For more information on the bill and what it requires of those operating in California’s electricity sector, you can view a copy here.

The solar industry’s recovery is just over the horizon, with help from U.S. stimulus funds, new government projects and new methods of financing—or that’s how an executive from solar powerhouse Sharp Corp. sees it, anyway.

“I call it a warming up,” Ron Kenedi, vice president of Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group, said in an interview [earlier today] at the Solar Power International conference being held in Anaheim, California, this week.

And it’s not just hollow enthusiasm manufactured to drum up money from investors. According to Reuters, Sharp is returning to the 30 to 40 percent growth rate that was characteristic of the solar industry before global oversupply sent panel prices plummeting and the financial crisis put a temporary stopper on financing for new projects. While prices for panels have tumbled roughly 35 percent over the past seven months, Kenedi observes that the fall has reached a “plateau.” As an apparent gesture of its faith in its own pronouncements, Sharp expects to increase its market share across a variety of solar segments, ranging from small residential projects to utility-scale endeavors.

The utility-scale market is an especially important foray for Sharp, as it is the place where it is planning to target its new thin-film solar cells.

The lower cost of thin film is seen by Sharp and competitors as the best way to build utility projects because they are cheaper to produce than traditional silicon-based solar panels. U.S.-based First Solar dominates the thin film solar market, but Sharp aims to put as much thin film on the market as its silicon-based products.

Sharp doesn’t plan to waste any time—it has already planned to ramp up production at its new thin-film plant in Osaka, Japan,  in March 2010, where it will start off with a modest 480 megawatts and expand to 1 gigawatt.

What do you think? Is Sharp’s optimistic prediction wishful and premature…or bold and spot-on? Or is it still too early to tell?

The Obama administration today announced 100 utility projects that will collectively receive $3.4 billion in federal stimulus money to promote the development and deployment of advanced electricity grid technologies. The Department of Energy said that the grants, ranging from $400,00 to $200 million in size, will spawn the installation of nearly 20 million advanced digital meters, nationwide. By enabling utilities and regulators to improve demand-side management, these so-called “smart meters” are viewed as an a key component to modernizing the country’s electric grid. They also let owners of solar panels — and other distributed renewable energy generation systems — track and manage their electricity use.

As reported by Bloomberg,

“The current system is outdated and dilapidated,” Carol Browner, the White House’s top energy adviser, said in a conference call with reporters late yesterday. Today’s grants “will give us a transformational impact on how electricity is generated, delivered and consumed,” she said.

For more news and info on smart grid developments, check out posts from our very own Sandra Kreis.

Today, California’s Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced a contract to buy 500 megawatts of solar power from suppliers Abengoa Solar and NextEnergy Resources. PG&E has been one of the state’s, and one of the nation’s, strongest utility supporters of solar and this contract makes up about two thirds of the company’s current strategy to acquire an additional 830 MW of solar. Instead of getting energy from photovoltaics (solar electricity), these projects will utilize concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, which runs a traditional steam turbine with un-traditional means:

Both projects will use proven solar thermal technology to generate renewable energy for PG&E’s electric customers. Curved mirrors in the shape of troughs will focus solar energy onto fluid-filled tubes extending the length of each trough. The heated fluid will then be used to create steam for generating electricity.

One site will be in San Bernardino County, and the other in Riverside County.

The Platts Smart Grid Policy and Implementation Forum kicked off this morning with a keynote address from Dr. Alicia Jackson, the Science Policy Adviser to the Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, Senator Jeff Bingaman.

The smart grid is unique on Capitol Hill compared to other issues in that it has sustained broad and bipartisan support from members of Congress. According to Dr. Jackson, this is true because each member has a different view on how to meet our future clean energy goals. “The smart grid is in the eye of the beholder,” said Jackson to a crowd of energy industry veterans looking towards the future of the grid.

We really need to think about the next step in the whole process…to make sure that [our current] investments capture the full potential of the smart grid.

With the smart grid as a key enabler of future energy goals such as more renewable energy and demand side reduction, we are bound to see attention paid towards clean energy integration. However, Dr Jackson does not anticipate that we will see much direct federal legislation in relation to the smart grid over the next few years. Rather, due to the intertwined nature of our cumulative clean energy goals, smart grid provisions will inevitably be incorporated.

Dr. Jackson’s work on the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources includes smart grid, distributed generation, manufacturing and industrial competitiveness, federal energy research and development, and advanced energy storage technologies. GetSolar will continue to cover issues discussed at the Platts conference over the next few days, so check back here for more smart grid and distributed solar news.

Next week, the country’s largest business-to-business solar trade show will take place in Anaheim, CA. GetSolar will be there and we’ll report from the trenches, but to give you an idea of the scope of the conference ahead:

• Over 900 exhibitors and 25,000 attendees expected, more than double the size of last year’s conference
• Keynote speakers include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who will give a talk entitled “Green Gold Rush: A Vision for Energy Independence, Jobs, and National Wealth”
• Roundtable sessions with CEOs of companies like Photon International, LIPA, and SunPower
• Pre- and post-conference full and half-day workshops, in addition to three days of sessions devoted to six different tracks
  • Cross-cutting
  • Execution & Implementation
  • Finance
  • Markets
  • Policy
  • Technology
• Public night on Wednesday, October 28, 5:30-8:30pm: special workshops and informational sessions directed towards consumers

Plus, the opening reception is at Disneyland and you just never know when the Governator might drop by. October 27-29, Anaheim: we’ll see you there!

A couple of weeks ago, we told you that Arizona U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords’ (D) “Solar Technology Roadmap Act” had successfully jumped through committee and onto the House floor. Now, we’re happy to report that the House has green-lighted the bill so it can make its way towards the Senate. It passed by a very healthy margin indeed, at 310-106. Giffords represents a state with a history of strong solar incentives, and is doing Arizona solar proponents proud with the success of this innovative legislation.

The Solar Roadmap, if ultimately passed into law, will allow for better communication across the industry to achieve effective, efficient infrastructure building and ensure best distribution and use of federal funds.