The falling price of rooftop solar has provided a great opportunity – and impetus – for companies to install systems to help satisfy corporate energy efficiency and environmental goals. The challenge still exists, however, to drive broader adoption of solar power and other renewable energy systems in view of the Obama administration’s goals to ease the country’s dependency on fossil fuels from foreign and domestic sources. That need brings special significance to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon 2011, in Washington, D.C. Nineteen teams of college students are competing to build the most cost-effective, energy efficient, innovative and attractive solar home. This year’s contest, a biennial event, emphasizes the importance of affordability – and can hold lessons for the solar and building industries as well as students. So far, it seems that students are getting it. [Read this article]

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While Italy and Germany slug it out for the title of world’s largest solar market, the U.S. is hitting its own major photovoltaic milestone. Last year, the U.S. solar market managed to consume 887 megawatts of solar panels. This year, the U.S. of A. breaks the one-gigawatt bar for the first time en route to a forecasted 2011 total of 1.8 gigawatts. The U.S. solar energy industry continues to be one of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy in 2011. In total, cumulative grid-connected solar electric installations have reached more than 3 gigawatts – enough to power nearly 600,000 U.S. homes. “On the whole, the U.S. is currently the PV industry’s most attractive and stable growth market,” said Shayle Kann, Managing Director of Solar at GTM Research. [Read this article]

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For owners of huge warehouses and other industrial space, the sharp decline in solar panel prices bodes well for the growth of a fledgling business: renting out roof space to solar-energy operations. In recent years, utilities and private energy companies have started generating electricity by lining big rooftops with solar panels. Landlords are hoping demand for this space will grow as the price of panels and other costs associated with solar-energy production decline. “Over time, it will become more competitive and even more compelling to buy rooftop-generated solar,” said Jack Rizzo, managing director of global construction for Prologis Inc., one of the world’s largest industrial-space owners. Roof-top generated energy has some advantages because buildings are typically located closer to populations. That saves transmission costs and wear and tear on the electric grid that large solar “farms” located on the ground in deserts or sunny rural areas sometimes face. [Read this article]

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For the first time, California no longer reigns as the U.S. state with the largest commercial solar market, and it’s lost that spot to – surprise, surprise – New Jersey, according to a new report on the booming solar industry. The commercial solar market in New Jersey (aka “The Garden State”) jumped 170% from the first quarter of this year to the second quarter, said Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. As a result, New Jersey’s photovoltaic (PV) installations now account for 24% of all those in the U.S. – up from 15% at the end of March. California’s market is still growing, but other states are starting to install PV panels even faster as the solar boom spreads nationwide, according to the latest quarterly U.S. Solar Market Insight report by Resch’s group and GTM Research. The report says the PV market is 69% larger than a year ago and 17% greater than at the end of March. [Read this article]

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The past 12 months have featured one of the most dramatic price drops in the history of the solar market, according to industry figures. So far in 2011, the cost of solar photovoltaic, or PV, panels has come down by 30 percent from 2010 levels and could have more room to drop, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA). Separate data produced by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory show a 17 percent drop in prices between 2009 and 2010, and a drop on pace to reach 22 percent this year. The industry is also getting behind more flexible financing means, including loan programs that help limit upfront costs. Leasing home solar systems is another option, and consumers are taking advantage of the trend. The inclusion of a solar system in a newly built home or as part of a home resale is becoming a major sought-after feature, industry proponents say. Solar inclusion at the time of building has also expanded from just those developers and contractors promoting themselves as “green” builders to more of the generalized home construction business. [Read this article]

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Source: Clean Technica

The average cost of installing residential and commercial solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the US dropped a record 17% in 2010 and it continues to drop in 2011, an additional 11% through June, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s “Tracking the Sun IV” report. Slowly but surely, the US market for solar PV power is growing and developing. Actually not so slowly. The US solar power market continued to grow at a record-breaking 66% pace in 2011′s first half. Domestic solar manufacturing rose 31%, while 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar power is under construction, according to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) “US Solar Market Insight.” Green jobs are growing as well. Some 93,500 Americans worked in the US solar industry in 2010, and more than half of the country’s solar companies are planning to expand hiring in 2011, according to
The Solar Foundation’s “The National Solar Jobs Census.” [Read this article]

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