It's a Bright, Bright Sunshiny Day for Solar Power

By David Bois | Thursday, June 3, 2010 4:33 PM ET

With the Gulf disaster, we can see clearly now how important it will be to choose new energy solutions. The encouraging news is just how quickly things are moving.

Renewable energy continues to be a hot topic for us here at Tonic. And while we hold our collective breath for a successful solution to the ongoing spill in the Gulf of Mexico, such a raw and distressing demonstration of the downside of our old energy ways of thinking offers an opportunity for us to be reminded that change is afoot. Not only can we choose another energy path, but we're already moving along it, and we're picking up the pace to boot.

We've told similar happy tales here about record-breaking rates in new installations of wind energy projects, and today we learn by way of Worldwatch Institute that new photovoltaic (PV) solar power generation is also moving forward at so-far unheard of rates of growth.

According to a news release provided by the Washington D.C.-based research institution, some 7,300 megawatts (MW) of new solar-based clean energy generation was installed around the world during 2009. This represents a 20 percent rate of growth over the previous year and, as Worldwatch points out, this brings the global PV solar electricity sector to a level of more than 21,000 MW, or the equivalent power usage of 5.5 million homes.

Worldwatch tells us that the lion's share of the 2009 solar activity took place in Europe where approximately 70 percent of the world's new PV power generation came online last year. By itself, Germany accounts for a full half of the world's newly-built PV capacity.

While the overall percentage of energy derived from solar remains modest, in consideration of the ever-increasing rate of growth we see that there's both room for lots more and a rapidly developing interest in getting there.

Furthermore, a scan of today's solar energy news clearly indicates that we are not keen to stand still on the matter here in the US. A new 10 MW plant has just been announced as arriving soon in Boise, Idaho, while California's PG&E has just cut the ribbon for a new 5 MW PV solar facility in the Central Valley town of Mendota.

Meanwhile, southern California utility San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has announced a pair of different demonstration projects that aim to expand the technology envelope through the exploration and refinement of approaches that reflect and concentrate incoming solar energy before then putting it to work to generate power.