Solar World: A sunny 2006 for solar
By Leah Krauss Dec 30, 2006, 6:36 GMT
Source: © 2006 by United Press International
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/energywatch/renewables/features/article_1238131.php/Solar_World_A_sunny_2006_for_solar
TEL AVIV, Israel (UPI) — The past year has seen landmark legislative support for solar in the United States; testing on the world`s largest solar dish in Israel; and the announcement of solar projects in locations as far-flung as Central America, southeast Asia and Africa. And despite high prices driven by demand for silicon, the main ingredient in most solar panels, solar energy firms sported big gains in the stock market and in their quarterly earnings reports.
Perhaps the most dramatic developments in the global solar energy industry happened in the United States in 2006. The country that uses most of the world`s energy finally put its efforts behind a comprehensive renewable energy program as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which took effect January 1, 2006. Though many individual states already had tax breaks for solar in place, the Energy Policy Act introduced the first federal solar tax credit, encouraging businesses and homeowners to put photovoltaic panels on their roofs and to start using the sun to heat their water.
The U.S. solar energy market is ‘a sleeping giant that is waking up,’ Australian solar energy expert Martin A. Green from the University of New South Wales said during an October solar energy conference in San Jose, Calif. February saw President Bush visiting solar energy plants like United Solar Ovonics` Auburn Hills, Mich., facility. Later, in December, Congress extended the federal tax credit for another year, giving the industry time to lobby for more comprehensive incentive plans.
Rhone Resch, the president of the Washington, DC-based Solar Energy Industries Association, told United Press International that getting Congress to enact sweeping solar incentive programs was the ‘No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priority’ for the industry in 2007. The association has hired a tax lobby firm, plans to increase its staff and its grass roots campaign, and to pour money into a media budget in the coming year, Resch said. ‘I`m totally fired up … it should be fun,’ he said, adding that his goal is to help the American solar industry grow 60 percent to 70 percent every year, as the world`s leading solar market does.
And speaking of Germany, solar industry growth in that country is slowing, but still leads the world. Michael Geissler, the managing director of Berliner Energieagentur GmbH, serves as a consultant for the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, and he told UPI in October that it is true that the German solar market`s growth is slowing. ‘I would say we had an explosive market in the last 3 to 4 years because of a new (feed-in tariff) law given by the government, and now we`re on a high level in the market,’ Geissler said. ‘It`s absolutely clear that we can`t have this strong (a level of) development year by year,’ he continued. For the photovoltaic market — the solar panels most often seen on rooftops — Geissler predicted a stable market with ‘small growth.’
For solar thermal technologies, however, he predicts much more room for growth in Germany. Solar technology also saw several important developments, such as increased interest in ultra-thin photovoltaic material through nanotechnology, and new efficiency records in concentrator photovoltaic technology.
In December, Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab announced that it had surpassed the 40-percent mark for concentrator photovoltaics — a development that some compared to the athletic signifigance of running the first-ever four-minute mile. ‘I don`t think that CPV will take over the PV market in the coming year, but I think there will be some exciting commercial developments,’ David Faiman, the director of Israel`s National Solar Research Center, told UPI this week. Faiman and colleagues spent much of 2006 testing concentrator photovoltaic cells with the world`s largest mirrored solar dish.
And then there`s the money. Several publicly traded solar companies — including United Solar`s parent company, Energy Conversion Devices — gained more than 100 percent on the markets in 2005, and 2006 is likely to be an equally profitable year. ‘Photovoltaics have been growing at this rate for the past five years,’ J. Peter Lynch, a financial consultant and an expert on the renewable energy industry, told UPI in August.
Lynch cited the solar companies` small starting size and ‘the energy situation worldwide’ as reasons for the staggering growth. In an article for Renewable Energy Access, Lynch compared the average growth of seven public solar companies and one ‘clean energy’ company with the average growth of three well-known indices: the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ.
The indices gained an average of 1.25 percent. The solar companies, on the other hand, grew by an average of 134 percent. Among these, DayStar Technologies posted 332 percent growth for 2005, Evergreen Solar gained 213 percent and Distributed Energy Systems Corp. rose 160 percent, Lynch wrote. ‘Capacity and production are going up each year at these companies,’ Lynch told UPI. ‘And they`re not going to catch up with demand any time soon.’