Collaboration between the Sanyo North American Corp. in San Diego, California and the Jacoby School of Engineering at the University of California at San Diego could make southern California even more of a hotbed for solar innovation.

Last week, the two announced a three-year partnership to develop more-efficient ways of capturing and utilizing solar power for electricity. Sanyo will spend $3 million to fund research on “the next generation of energy solutions” — technologies that generate reliable, low-emissions energy at an affordable price.

San Diego and the surrounding area may be the first region to see the results of the research, which led Hiroshi Hanafusa of Sanyo Japan to make the following prediction about the southern California city: ”We expect San Diego to be the most advanced green city in the world.”

The partnership was born after a Sanyo study revealed higher than anticipated demand for solar energy systems in the United States. A recent report (PDF) from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) revealed that grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) energy installations grew 38 percent in 2009 — this despite the recession.

Sanyo and UCSD have already begun their research, working on methods to predict the fluctuation in PV power production over large areas.