\nKennedy, a fellow parent and veteran Australian Greenpeace activist turned
\nsolar entrepreneur. How’s business? I
\nasked. Pretty bloody good, as it turns out. Kennedy’s startup, Sungevity<\/a>, took in more orders for rooftop
\nsolar systems in March than in all of 2009.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That solar flare is being fueled in large part, according to
\nKennedy, by a new lease option Sungevity recently began offering its customers.
\nThe option is financed through a $24 million deal with U.S. Bank. Rather than
\npurchasing a solar array, customers can lease the system through Sungevity for
\na monthly fee, thus avoiding the considerable capital costs of buying the
\nsystem outright. The popularity of lease options, which are also offered by
\nbigger installers such as SolarCity, is another indication that creative
\nfinancing is as key to getting people to go solar as the performance of the
\nhardware.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As it happened, the Solar <\/p>\n Although the United <\/p>\n That’s an amazing number, considering one could reasonably <\/p>\n But there were other incentives. The Obama stimulus <\/p>\n As photovoltaic power has gotten cheaper, solar panels have <\/p>\n Utilities have also initiated huge solar distributed <\/p>\n All the activity attracted the attention of Chinese solar <\/p>\n No surprise then that California <\/p>\n Once you get past California <\/p>\n Still, the growth in the solar industry meant more green <\/p>\n The need to ramp up solar power is thrown into sharp relief when <\/p>\n However, if you consider the huge numbers of massive <\/p>\n The SEIA says there are 10,583 megawatts of solar thermal <\/p>\n But to put things in perspective, the solar thermal project <\/p>\n Given the trends in the solar industry, the SEIA says <\/p>\n All of which is good news for Sungevity’s Danny Kennedy. The Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Pollution limits are essential for clean energy investments<\/a><\/p>\n Know your solar<\/a><\/p>\n
\nEnergy Industries Association annual report<\/a> landed in my inbox later that same
\nday. It showed that Sungevity isn’t the only solar company looking at a very
\ngood 2010.<\/p>\n
\n States solar industry’s overall growth for
\nall types of solar energy slowed somewhat as the Great Recession reached its
\nnadir in 2009, residential rooftop installers had a record year. Companies like
\nSungevity installed 156 megawatts of residential solar panels in 2009, up 101
\npercent from the previous year.<\/p>\n
\nexpect that putting a $25,000 solar array on one’s roof would fall to the
\nbottom of the home improvement list during the greatest economic downturn since
\nthe Great Depression.<\/p>\n
\npackage’s lifting of the $2,000 tax credit cap on home solar systems certainly
\nhelped. As did solar panel makers’ price slashing due to the oversupply that
\nresulted from a ramp up in production. Solar module prices fell more than 40
\npercent in 2009, according to the SEIA report. That led to a 10 percent decline
\nin the cost of an installed solar array. (Installation costs typically account
\nfor half the price of a solar array.)<\/p>\n
\ncome off the roof and are being planted in the ground in huge solar farms. The
\ndramatic price declines in solar modules got the attention of California utilities in 2009. The utilities signed
\npower purchase agreements for hundreds of millions of megawatts’ worth of solar
\npower plants.<\/p>\n
\ngeneration programs. California’s
\ntwo biggest utilities, PG&E and Southern California Edison, last year
\nannounced that, over the next five years, they would install a total of 1,000
\nmegawatts on rooftops and in ground arrays near substations and cities.
\n(SunPower, the San Jose, Calif.-based solar module maker, recently won a
\n200-megawatt contract with Southern California Edison). When the Sacramento
\nMunicipal Utility District put 100 megawatts of distributed solar up for bid,
\nthe program sold out within a week.<\/p>\n
\nmodule makers, whose California
\nmarket share more than doubled (to 46 percent) in 2009. One company, Yingli, arrived
\nin California
\nat the beginning of 2009 and ended the year with nearly a third of the market
\nshare.<\/p>\n
\nremains the solar capital of the country. In 2009, the state installed 200
\nmegawatts of solar capacity, nearly four times the amount of New Jersey, the No. 2 solar state. (It’s no
\ncoincidence that both states offer the nation’s most generous solar
\nincentives.) Altogether, California now boasts
\na total solar capacity of 1,102 megawatts—10 times that of New Jersey. (That’s impressive, but still
\nless than about half of California’s
\nwind energy capacity.)<\/p>\n
\nand New Jersey,
\nhowever, the numbers drop dramatically. The third biggest solar state, Nevada, had just 100 megawatts of solar capacity
\ninstalled in 2009; No. 10, Massachusetts,
\nhad 18 megawatts.<\/p>\n
\njobs. Solar added 10,000 jobs plus 7,000 indirect jobs in 2009, even as the
\noverall unemployment rate soared. According to the SEIA, total solar employment
\nin the U.S.
\nstood at more than 45,000 last year, about evenly divided between direct and
\nindirect jobs.<\/p>\n
\nyou compare how much capacity the U.S. added in 2009 compared to
\nother countries. Germany,
\nthe world’s biggest solar power thanks to years of generous subsidies,
\ninstalled 3,800 megawatts last year, according to the SEIA. That’s nearly twice
\nthe total U.S. capacity and
\neight times what the U.S.
\ninstalled in 2009. Germany
\nnow generates 9,677 megawatts of solar electricity. (Even the Czech Republic
\ninstalled nearly as much as the U.S.
\nin 2009, putting 411 megawatts online.) Solar currently supplies less than 1
\npercent of America’s
\nelectricity.<\/p>\n
\nmegawatt solar thermal power plants planned for the desert Southwest, the U.S. is poised
\nto become a solar superpower. (Solar thermal plants use arrays of mirrors to
\nfocus sunlight on liquid-filled boilers that create steam to drive
\nelectricity-generating turbines.)<\/p>\n
\npower plants in the pipeline. Licensing those big solar farms—and securing
\nthe billions of dollars needed to build each one—has proven to be a laborious
\nprocess. Only 81 megawatts in the pipeline are currently under construction.<\/p>\n
\nclosest to being licensed—BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah plan in Southern
\nCalifornia—will generate nearly as much electricity as all the photovoltaic
\npanels installed in 2009.<\/p>\n
\nprospects in 2010 are looking bright, with growth continuing. Expect a big bump
\nin rooftop solar thermal systems, which collect sunlight to heat water, as a
\nnew California
\nsubsidy program kicks into gear.<\/p>\n
\nboom in demand has him scrambling to secure supplies of solar panels. That’s a
\nnice problem to have in the Great Recession.<\/p>\n