Monday, October 20, 2008

Solar Power International '08 Wraps Up

the solar coaster wasn't in San Diego this past week for Solar Power International 2008, but luckily, quite a few bloggers and other online media were.

RenewableEnergyWorld hosted the official video broadcast of the event, providing a day-by-day blow of the news and views coming out of San Diego, including some great videos of key speakers. For a more abbreviated version, check out Gunther Portfolio's post, in which he highlights especially the CEO Panel titled "Driving Down Costs," if you only have time for one video:



You'll also find a plethora of stories at GreenTech Media, Earth2Tech and Green Tech Blog covering the event. Here's a few stories that the solar coaster found highlight-worthy:
  • The 10 solar startups to watch at Solar Power International 2008.
  • GreenVolts' newly unveiled CarouSoul unit was the buzz of the exhibition, as Gunther Portfolio reports, while SkyFuel showcases its SkyTrough systems which boat a 35% reduction in cost compared to other parabolic trough technologies.
  • Utility in Gainsville, Florida considers implementing a feed-in tariff, and now, so does Oregon.
  • Speaking of Oregon, the northwestern state has already been put on the solar map thanks to SolarWorld and Sanyo opening up solar manufacturing facilities in Hillsoboro and Salem, respectively.
  • And speaking of maps, 3TIER was in San Diego to show how it uses the Google Maps platform to provide high-resolution data maps of solar, wind and hydro resources. This is yet another example of where the IT meets the ET (energy technology), and the need to reduce information asymmetries in the solar industry. (Remember Fat Spaniel, or even National Semi and Enphase?) Check out 3TIER's solar resource assessment map of the Western hemisphere here.
  • Building Integrated PV (BIPV) in focus.
  • The bleak financial situation might spur consolidation in the industry. There is some discussion of this in the CEO panel video above starting at 47'28" or so, with the Q-Cells CEO agreeing that consolidation is inevitable, but not before margins further upstream in the supply chain, which are still very healthy, get squeezed more.

12 comments:

Colin Waters said...

Love the site. Nothing I think has been overlooked in this country and the world's development more than solar energy. For several years there has been talk of of using the sun and it finally seems that we have the right frame of mind.

I was very happy for my company, Trade Show Emporium, to move along with adding 20 solar panels to the roof of our building. Here in Colorado we have over 300 days of sunshine a year, so it is going to be a great resource for us. We are using it mainly to offset the conventional energy consumption from our servers.

We also have a great line of green products and recycle, so adding the solar panels is just going to make us even more environmental. Hopefully we are just the beginning of the move in our trade show display industry, which is very wasteful.

Keep up the good work!

Kriss Bergethon said...

Hello,

I own Solar Sphere, we sell solar panels, custom-built systems, power kits, lighting, and educational courses. We also have a lot of free information and a large learning center:

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I notice you haven't posted in a while. We would like to appear on your site. We can provide blog posts, content, and articles in exchange for a simple link. Here is an example of a recent post I did:

http://watthead.blogspot.com/2009/09/eight-cool-things-about-solar-that-just_02.html

We can also do posts on solar payback, feed in tariffs, solar installation business, etc. Let me know if you are interested in talking more about this. Thank you for your time.


--
Kriss Bergethon
Customer Service Manager
Solar Sphere Online
http://www.spheralsolar.com/
1-877-774-3730

maria said...

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zhomeenergy said...

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Tim said...

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