Business Shines at Solar Conference

The Sun has set on the Solar Power 2007 conference, which ran through Thursday in Long Beach. The business-to-business conference was a huge success for event organizers who had to turn away some last-minute attendee hopefuls. Here are some of the highlights from the event:

-- SMA America, the U.S. arm of Germany's SMA Technologie AG, is bringing European technology to the lagging American market. The company is introducing inverter/battery systems such as the Sunny Boy and Sunny Island that have greater power and reliability than previous models.

The Sunny Island 5048U is interesting because of the way the company does tech support. Instead of using wireless sensors or some over-the-grid communications, the company has an SD (secure digital) card slot (like in many digital cameras) that records the unit's behavior. If something in the system fails, you plug the card into your PC and email the company the data, which will limit the number of service trips and ensures that the appropriate parts are brought on the truck.

-- Best banner of the show was Solon's "Don't leave the planet to the stupid."

-- Ted Turner was in attendance, talking up his love for everything solar. DT Solar, company that he has invested will build and operate a 2 megawatt solar electric power system to supply electricity to a Hall's Warehouse Corporation of New Jersey. In an interesting twist, DT Solar and its finance partners take all of the risk as Hall's won't pay anything up front but signed a long-term contract to buy all of the power from the solar installation. We can expect to see more of these types of finance deals.

-- Many of the conference sessions were standing room only. Solar Power was dominated by suit-wearing middle aged white guys, a stark contrast to the consumer-oriented West Coast Green I attended a few days before in San Francisco. There were a surprising number of Chinese solar panel manufacturers in attendance.

-- Large scale concentrating solar plants are about to become central to utilities' futures. The technology is maturing, although the market share for the various technologies (solar troughs, solar towers or concentrated photovoltaic) is not decided.

-- The U.S. is lagging behind the rest of the world in embracing solar, but we could catch up to Europe by the end of the decade or sooner. Spain and Germany (with less sunlight than much of the cloudy Northwest) have much higher penetrations than the U.S. for installations, but China could soon dominate the manufacturing industry.

-- I met Gary Kremen, a man who became famous (and wealthy) by starting and selling Match.com, and for owning Sex.com, only to lose it by fraud and then having it returned to him years and hundred of millions of dollars later. He's now in the solar financing business, with the CleanPowerFinance website that matches solar customers with lending institutions. "I've gone from dirty to clean," Kremen said.

-- Three things are holding back solar from becoming ubiquitous -- cost, cost, and cost. While PV is proven, it's still not cost competitive in many areas without considerable governmental assistance. The new technologies have great promise to substantially lower costs, but it's mostly theoretical now.