 So now we're going to have a whole session talking about solar. And once again, as we've been trying to stress throughout this morning and this afternoon and what you've seen in the exhibits, is that each one of our wonderful renewable resources actually is a combination of a host of technologies and applications, which creates a wonderful opportunity in terms of thinking about how this means different kinds of applications, jobs, manufacturing, how we can use these different resources in many different ways across every section of our country. And of course we're really blessed here in the United States with an abundance of renewable energy in terms of all the host of renewable resources and we certainly are blessed with a lot of solar. And so to kick off our discussion this afternoon about solar, we are so glad to have Ron Resch, who is the President and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. Ron? Thank you very much Carol and good afternoon everyone. I want to start off by just kind of a quick show of hands because sometimes it's difficult for us when we come into a panel like this to know who our audience is and frankly your education level on the technology. So just a real quick show of hands, how many people here are staffers working for members of Congress? Anyone? Okay. How many? Okay. Question. They've gone home exactly. Second, so how many people are here from the media? Okay. Only one. All right. So we can get a little edgy here guys. Sure. We don't have to hold back too much. That's right. And the last question is how many people, actually the second last question, how many people here currently have solar on their home? Right. Two, three, four, five, six. That's great. Seven. So we have 35 potential customers in the room? I think that's exactly right. So I'm just going to assume that everybody else wants to have solar on your house and that's why you're here, which is a great thing because it is incredible technology. And before I kind of go into the details of what happened in 2009 and really what we hope to happen in 2010, I just want to talk a little bit about what is the solar industry? Because I think Carol did a really good job in teeing up a conversation that we're more than just one technology. I think when people think of solar, they tend to think of photovoltaics. And photovoltaics are panels that directly convert sunlight to electricity. It's the kind of technology that most of us are employing on our homes today. However, there's speak up. Oh, sure. Sorry, I'll just move it a little bit closer. The second technology is called solar water heating. And these are panels that are used to heat up water for cooking, cleaning, showering, those kinds of things. They can also be used for industrial purposes as well. And in fact Fenway Park employs solar water heating panels on their stadium in order to provide about 60% of the hot water needs for that facility. And then the third is called concentrating solar power or CSP. And concentrating solar comes in a couple of different forms, one of which is concentrating photovoltaics where you're using basically a mirror to focus the sunlight magnifying it up to 200 times on a very small solar chip and then getting very high outputs from that solar chip. And then the other is called solar thermal. And these are utility scale power plants that focus the sunlight either using parabolic mirrors, so the curved mirrors to focus the sunlight on a receiver tube which then heats up oil and generates steam, or using a power tower in which you're using heliostats or mirrors out in a field all pointed at one central location at very high temperatures, again, to generate steam and to run a standard power block. There's a couple of examples of these technologies back in the Expo Hall, so I hope you have a chance to go take a look at them before you leave today. But what I wanted to do first is talk to you a little bit about what's happening in the solar industry because it's pretty darn exciting. 2009, even though we were in a deep recession in this country, was a record year for solar in the United States. The solar electric industry grew by over 38% in the United States. Revenue grew by over 36% and manufacturing continued to grow in the United States with new plants coming online in Michigan, in Oregon, in Texas, in Georgia, in North Carolina, and other states. And so what we've seen is that solar continues to grow in the United States, driven in large part by both federal as well as state policy, but what we're seeing increasingly is an adoption of the technology itself by all sectors. So when I talked about growth 38% in 2009, the residential market, those who put solar up on their homes, grew by over 100% in 2009. I'll be curious to hear from Tony if they had a similar experience with Standard in this last year. The utility scale sector, and this is focused just on foldable tags here, but the utility scale sector for foldable tags grew by over 200%. So we saw a massive growth in those particular sectors. Now, the commercially interesting question is, okay, how's the entire industry really grown by 38%? Well, the math does add up, believe it or not. And if you go to our website, we have the See a Year in Review, or you can go to our booth over there and pick up the Year in Review to see more information. But basically, the commercial market was relatively flat. These are the big box stores, the Home Depot's, the Lowe's, the Target's, those kinds of stores where you've seen a lot of solar in the last couple of years. And the reason why is because the business model that was used in that particular sector is called the Power Purchase Agreement, is reliant in large part on having a tax equity investor, somebody who has tax liability to come in as an investor in the project who will get a rate of return and can utilize and monetize the tax credits. If you're a startup business or you don't have substantial amounts of revenue, you can't really use a 30% tax credit for the Year project, so you need to bring in that third party investor. And between 2007 and 2009, the number of tax equity investors in the United States went from 27 down to 3. And the amount of money available for investing in renewable energy projects, this isn't just solar, this is solar, wind, geothermal, everybody, dropped by about 90%. So all of a sudden there really was no available tax equity to invest in these renewable energy projects, so the commercial market actually went down just by a few megawatts, but it was flat. And this is the largest sector of the solar industry. The good news, if there is one, is that this was recognized by the administration and by Congress and reflected in the Recovery Act. When the Recovery Act was passed, they took the investment tax credit and converted it into a grant program at the Treasury Department, and that grant program basically removes that tax equity investor. There's no additional cost to the government. It just basically creates flexibility in how the projects were financed. That program did not come online until August of this last year, so we saw a large increase in commercial projects towards the end of the year, and certainly that growth has continued into 2010. So ultimately, I guess the question is how much did we install and where does that put us in kind of the global competitiveness position? So again, we, in total, installed the United States about 480 megawatts in 2009. Just to give you a perspective, so we were 480. Germany installed about 3,000 megawatts. Italy, 700 megawatts. Japan, 484 megawatts. So we were in fourth place. Not too bad. I'd like to get ahead of Japan and certainly take on Germany at some point. We're moving in the right direction. The interesting thing is to look at new capacity per capita. The country that installed the most solar per capita was actually the Czech Republic. 40 watts per person. Germany came in second at 36, and we go all the way down the line. The United States came in tenth place at 1.6 watts per person. I mean, what is 1.6 watts? I mean, I guess one little LED is worth a solar for everybody. I mean, it's fairly pitiful, to be honest with you. And I think it shows a need of how we need to continue to expand, let's just say, awareness as well as policies that support the growth of solar, and that's certainly what we want to do going forward. In 2010, we fully anticipate the market to double. The Treasury Grant Program has worked extremely well. Projects throughout the entire solar sector are continuing to grow both in number as well as in size. So when I talk a little bit about that utility scale market growing, actually 200% growth this last year, there's now 21,000 megawatts in the pipeline of utility scale projects. Again, we installed 480 megawatts this last year. There's 21,000 under development, and these are what we call the legitimate projects. Those that have either signed the power purchase agreement or have the land already and are developing the projects in a fairly senior manner. And that includes both concentrating solar, solar thermal, as well as photovoltaics. But we're also seeing that the market continue to grow in the residential side. You're seeing more and more electricians get into the business. People who've been let go by the housing industry are finding new careers, new entire career opportunities in the solar industry. And these are plumbers, these are roofers, these are electricians. I mean, Tony can tell the story about who he's hiring. But if you think about the downturn in the economy, you look at the housing stock that has been abandoned in places like Nevada. They've gone through a building boom over the last decade. There's a lot of people out of work. So we can put those people back to work in solar, and that's certainly what you're starting to see happen. What I want to just pivot very quickly on, and then my time is up, is to talk a little bit about policy. Because policy is a major part of the solar industry today. I hate to say it, but the solar industry doesn't exist in a meaningful way without policy. Now, you can say that pretty much about any energy technology. And when you step back and look at the oil industry, they've enjoyed incentives since 1916, permanent incentives since 1916, the coal industry since the 30s, the nuclear industry since the mid-50s. We didn't get our tax credits until the 2005 energy bill, and then they created a two-year tax credit and capped it at $2,000. So you really can't build an industry on something that's around for two years and capped at two grand. Thankfully, we've gotten that extended out through 2016, and it's a true 30% tax credit for both commercial as well as residential. So things are looking up. They're not permanent by any means, and certainly we are not nearly as subsidized as the oil and gas industry. Just to give you a quick data point, between 2003 and 2008, the oil and gas industry received about $70 billion in direct incentives from the federal government, and that same timeframe, the solar industry received less than $1 billion, and overall renewable electricity received less than $5 billion. And so when you start to look at the inequities about where we're using our taxpayers' dollars to advance energy and environmental policy, right now it's flipped on its head. Right now we are prioritizing the use of subsidizing oil, gas, and coal to a much greater extent than we are renewables. I don't mind that we're subsidizing them, but we need a level playing field. We need to recognize that ultimately you need to build solar, you need to build wind and geothermal and hydro, and those clean energy technologies that are carbon-free that improve the economic stability in this country and create new opportunity, and that they're domestic. And one of the best things about my job is the fact that the places where new manufacturing are occurring isn't just California, it's Michigan, it's Ohio, it's Pennsylvania, it's Tennessee, it's those states that need those manufacturing jobs the most. So before Carol gives me the hook, I'm going to just give one quick policy ask. This is our biggest ask. I talked a little bit about the Treasury Grant Program. This program is actually working, and it's working extremely well. We just released a study that shows a two-year extension of the Treasury Grant Program will create another 65,000 jobs here in the United States. This is a program that's basically taking a tax credit and providing more flexibility on how it's used. So it doesn't cost the taxpayer more than the administrative cost, about $5 million a year according to CBO. But what that does is it creates 65,000 new jobs all throughout the United States, and we'll keep an industry that's been growing continuing to grow. But without that Treasury Grant Program, we certainly face a downturn in the years ahead. So with that, I thank you for your patience and indulgence, and I look forward to answering your questions. Now we are going to turn to Tony Clifford, who is the CEO for Standard Solar. And as Roan was saying, the tax incentives have been terribly important for a lot of member companies of the Solar Energy Industries Association. And our subsidy system is so skewed, and it does make one wonder why we keep subsidizing those things that actually are creating some of our problems while we really need to be making sure that we're creating and transforming our energy economy. So, Tony. Thanks, Carol. You can come here or sit there. I'll just sit right here. This is very comfortable. I'll start by talking a little bit about Standard Solar. Roan referred to the company a couple of times, so I should give a little bit of background. We're just about four years old now in terms of how long we've actually been in commercial operation. Our first customer is here to my left, Roan Resch. But Roan was literally our first customer and we had his residential system installed. Since that time, we've done close to 700 residential systems. We've done all sorts of commercial and government buildings. The roof of the Department of Energy headquarters. We've done recently finished four buildings at Catholic University, Systemate American University, a bunch of buildings in the area. We also recently won a contract to provide up to six megawatts of PV to the University of Delaware over the next three years, and that will be the largest individual installation at any college or university in the United States. So we're a company that started out in the residential business in a bit, and that is still a very important business for us. But we've also expanded into commercial and larger scale systems. Roan was talking about the growth in the solar industry, and since we started commercial operations, we've managed to triple our revenues each year for the last four years. Now, 2009 was a downturn. We had projected that we'd do a factor of five in 2009 and we couldn't do it. And the reason we couldn't do it is what Roan alluded to. It's the fact that the sources of tax equity just weren't there. And some of those sources of tax equity were big banks like Bear Stearns and others that are no longer with us. And so that really changed. And the Treasury Grant program is absolutely essential. But we're excited about the future. We've got that factor of five growth that's in for 2010, and we fully expect to meet that hurdle this year. From the standpoint of jobs growth, I joined the company in February of 2007, and this is my second go-round in solar. I was first out of business school in the late 70s. I was with Solar Rex Corporation, which was the predecessor company to BP Solar. So when in 2006 I sold a company, or 2005 I sold a company, I was looking around for what to do next, and oil hit $65 a barrel on the way up. So I thought it might be a good time to get back into solar, I ended up getting hooked up with Standard Solar. But what I wanted to talk about today, it was pitched primarily as technology, and I think that a lot of the discussions of technology versus conventional silicon versus thin film and things like that have been really addressed. And what I wanted to talk about was how monitoring systems, which are like an adjunct for solar systems, how they can enhance the customer experience and how they can induce behavioral change. And I had a nice PowerPoint presentation that you'll be able to access. I can give it to you, but I want to talk through it a bit anyway. Now, solar PV systems, they're quiet, they go to work, they save money, they cut emissions, they're designed to be maintenance-free. You just put it on a roof or in the ground, and you just pretty much forget about it. If you want to, you can watch it once in a while, but the way the systems are designed, they're designed, especially if you're on a sloping roof, it's no problem. The rainwater will take care of it. But in terms of impacting behavior, I mean, right now you get an electricity bill once a month. If you want to aggregate the data for a year, you've got to get 12 months' worth. Maybe you're really efficient and you keep all your bills. You can do that quickly or you've got to call up the utility. But a once-a-month reminder is not the sort of feedback mechanism you need to induce behavioral change. And what you can do with a solar system is you're going to have daily, weekly, monthly, hourly, however you want to do it. You can be able to monitor your system. And this is the type of information that really changes behavior. We talk about it as the Prius effect. Any of you that own a Prius or any other hybrid vehicle, you've got that big display there, and it tells you what your instantaneous miles per gallon are and what you're doing right now. You try and push that number up a bit. And I went from driving a little pocket rocket BMW to a Prius. I really enjoy the Prius. And I try to keep it above 50 miles per gallon. But it's really a behavioral change. It absolutely is. And I can remember this guy next to me sitting in congressional and D.C. hearing rooms using his cell phone to call up what a system is doing right at the moment. You've done that any number. I can do it right now just to give you an example because I love doing this. This is my phone. And this is technology I've had in my house for four years. And it shows me both not only how much we're generating but how much we're using as well. So today we've generated 29 kilowatt hours. We've used 14. So by the time I go home, I'll have basically a 3 to 1 ratio on generation towards consumption. And it also shows how much I'm using. So I use this at night to walk around the house and unplug stuff and improve my energy efficiency. So, Ron, did it change your behavior? Dramatic. Did it change your wife and children's behavior? Yes. Well, they don't complain about me walking around and turning off the light. Now, people used to be able to see their meter spin backwards. And if we have a customer that still has a conventional meter, then it will spin backwards. And one of the situations we ran into a couple of years ago with a local utility that I won't name, one of our customers called up and told me that when she got home, there was a utility service man hitting the meter on the side of a hammer. And he was hitting the meter because the meter was spinning backwards. And she came up and said, I've got a solar array on the roof, blah, blah, blah. He didn't believe her. He called his boss and his boss said, is there a solar array on the roof? Yes, get out of there. So, but that's a true story. Now, with the new digital meters, rather than getting a positive number, you get a negative number. It's the same thing. And occasionally, we will have a customer that has a zero bill for the month. Boy, does that make them happy. We'll get a copy of that bill in the mail. That's what it comes down to. And you can monitor the data a bunch of different ways. I mean, every system you get, there's going to be some sort of monitor right on the inverter that shows it. But usually the inverter is in your basement or it's on an outside wall. So, you know, that's like the base model. You can also get a wireless or a plug-in monitor. You can have it fed into your PC. I don't have to talk about having it put into a BlackBerry or an iPhone because Ron just demonstrated that. But you do get instantaneous feedback on this stuff. I've got a bunch of charts here that you're not going to see. But basically what I show is, you know, you can do this, as I said, you get hourly feedback, you get daily feedback, you get monthly feedback, you get annual feedback. And it does change behavior. And we have had instances, and Ron is one of them, but many others, where they will do a system. And, you know, you don't want to design the system. Well, now it's changing some, but you want to be sure that you don't generate a complete surplus because most RPS, most of the legislation, the utility has to credit you for the amount you put back into the system. But if you have an annual bill that's negative, they have no obligation to write you a check. So you don't want to sort of, you know, give the man free electricity. So you design the systems to be less. But what happens is in this feedback mechanism, you get people who start having other energy efficiency projects. They start, you know, turning off the lights, doing things like that. And they creep up towards 100%. Or they'll call me up and say, Tony, I'm at 88% of my demand. I want to get to near 100. Can you sell me another 10 panels? That has happened with certain people that we have as customers. But this is the sort of thing. I mean, this influences behavior, and it's getting the person involved in this stuff. And it's, you know, it's not going to take the place of federal legislation or anything like that. All it really is an important factor in energy conservation is just having this sort of information available. Now, that's enough that I can say without having the slide. So what I'd like to do is maybe talk a little bit about what I think we really need in terms of policy options. And the one that Roan talked about, the extension of the Treasury Grant Program, that's absolutely crucial. And that's important for sort of keeping the momentum going. It's scheduled to run out the end of this year. It has virtually no impact on the budget because right now it's, you know, if you have a 30% tax credit anyway, this is just accelerating the process of getting that money in. So I'm really hopeful that, you know, Congress can sort of find the time in the next few months to actually get something like this passed in an extension bill. Also, I think that, you know, they took a couple of billion dollars out of the DOE programs for the cash for clunkers, and they promised to give it back, but they haven't given it back yet. And this is important for getting, you know, additional solar projects in the ground. The other thing that we need is at some point, we absolutely have to get some sort of long-term energy program. And we've got to one way or another recognize the true costs of our reliance on fossil fuels. And I mean, you can point to the blowout of a well in the Gulf. And I hate to hear that called an oil spill. It is not an oil spill. It is a blowout of a well. It's 19,000 barrels a day, is what I heard this morning, which is up from the 5,000 that they were talking about before. And that's just the beginning. I mean, we tend to forget about these things. Most people forgot there was a mining disaster in West Virginia, you know, six weeks ago. And probably nobody remembers the fly ash disaster in Tennessee last year. But these are things and they add up. And it's, you know, the only way we're going to get some recognition of the true costs of fossil fuels are to do things like impose some sort of a carbon tax. And we've just got to move this way because, you know, as Ron said, you know, the oil industry has had oil depletion allowances and other things since 1916. And with the monies, these vast amounts of money that are getting the solar business started, the 1970s of what the current fossil fuel incentives are. It's absurd. It's completely absurd. So talk to your congresspeople about that because I guess their staff people aren't here today. All right, after that, I'll just take questions after we're finished here. You guys are quite a dog and pony show. I really like that with the demos and everything. And as Tony said, we will be putting his slides up on the EESI website along with presentations from other people. And of course, that website is www.eesi.org. At this time, I would like to turn to our third speaker for this panel, Eric Huffman. And Eric is the Business Development Manager for the Eastern Region for Sun Optics. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. And thanks to EESI and, of course, the Sustainable Energy Coalition as well. It's great to see so many people here. And as we talked just a minute ago, the other halls packed with people much more than last year, in my opinion. It seems like it's very well attended. So I appreciate everyone coming out. Hopefully it's been worthwhile and you'll be able to spend some time over at the booths if you haven't been there yet. But as Carol said, my name's Eric Huffman. I manage the Eastern Region for Sun Optics. Sun Optics is a skylight company. And you might say, well, why is the skylight guy here with the PV guys? We look at our product as a passive solar product, which just means we don't generate power, but, of course, we are dependent on the sun for our product to work too. So we feel we fit in well. And you'll see that in a couple of things that we'll draw out today. But there was actually a comment made this morning by one of the legislators that got up and made the brief remarks. He said, speaking of the oil spill, he said, no one's ever been hurt by a... Bill. That's right. I'm sorry. That's true. No one's ever been hurt by a photon. And, you know, pretty interesting the way he said it, or he actually said photon spill. So it's not a spill, but, yes, you know, it's interesting when you look at these technologies and the reliability and the safeness and the way that they work, compared to what we are using now, there is a dramatic difference. So the way we look at daylighting, let me ask, how many people have skylights in their houses? Okay. All right. Good start. How many people have ever noticed skylights in or where they shop maybe? Pretty much everywhere, right? So we look at... It's kind of a terminology thing. We look at skylighting and daylighting, and we feel it's actually two different things. Skylighting is what we just talked about. Hey, I got a skylight in my house, or we got a couple of skylights here or there. And how many people ever... I don't know if you have a glass skylight and you get a spotlight of light on the floor and it just kind of tracks across the floor all day. And if you happen to be sitting there or have a couch there, it just kind of fades it out and you get kind of like you're sitting in your car when the sun's beating on you. You know, that's in our mind and what we think about with skylighting. And then when you talk about daylighting, that's when we use that term to describe a way to make the best use of the sun, diffuse it properly into space, use proper design and layout and techniques to create a pleasant environment to work or live in. And basically the goal is to eliminate the need for electric lights during the day when you're daylighting the space and therefore the way it ties in nicely with PV is to not have to generate the power to run the lights during the day. So instead of having to create that power, we can eliminate that need and therefore save that money or use that power in other places to run equipment or computers or whatever else might need to be run in that space. So that's how we feel daylighting works with solar in a passive way. Because we don't generate power, that's what we call passive, that works in well with that idea. So we look at skylights versus daylighting and then we talk about, of course the sun's going to be round for a long time. NASA tells us it should be about another 5 billion years, so we should be able to make use of it at least for a little while and put it to good use and hopefully be able to reduce the demand that we have. There's actually a DOE report. I have some information that I put together that I brought some extras and then we have some at the booth as well. It was published in 2008 actually called the Top Lighting Report where they actually studied top lighting or daylighting of space and how it would affect the energy efficiency of space as well as the demand in the country. And if we properly daily every space that potentially could be done, basically single story commercial space was what they were looking at, we could save 117 million kilowatt hours per year. So it's a pretty big number. I mean that would be a lot less power to generate and it would create significant savings for us and what we have to pay for energy. And there was a couple other things that came out in that study about a lot of people have concerns with daylighting about heat gain and heat loss and how that affects the power you have to generate for whether it's heating and cooling and how it ties in with the other systems. So there's a lot that comes into play when you're talking about daylighting and doing it properly part of what ties into that is a real common question is well how can we control the lights so we don't get the excessive heat gain and again this DOE study pointed out that if it is properly done you actually do not create you create a net positive gain into the space of it's always better to turn off the lights rather than to run the lights and have to you control them through an automatic dimming system or automatic control system and allows you to again eliminate the heat that you're getting from the lights and reduce the heat gain into the space the technical term that you'll hear about it is you'll get half the heat gain from the natural light than you will from the electric light so you're actually gaining less heat into the space and they studied in both Vermont and in Phoenix, Arizona so it was a well documented study a lot of good information in it that has application for those in commercial space that they're trying to daylight now there's other studies that you might say well hey how does this affect me there's a lot of studies that go into not only commercial space but also how daylighting affects us and how we interact with daylighting and what it does in the environments that we work and perhaps where your kids might go to school and how it affects us in those environments so there's a lot of information about there about the studies that have been done one for example references schools that are daylight versus non-daily schools versus kids in the non-daily schools and generally they have better test scores they have better attendance they usually grow taller have less cavities there's a lot of things that get attributed to daylighting now we don't typically use those as sales points just because it's hard to quantify some of those but that information is out there and what it might mean to you is in your school district when they're considering daylighting or building new schools or modifying an existing school how that would perhaps create what you would recommend or what you would like to see your own children studying and what type of environment simple things like introducing some skylights into a space sounds like well that's not a big deal we probably don't need to bring that up I'm sure the architect already knows about that that might be the case but as you voice your opinion and let them know what's important to you there are some simple things that make a big difference now the same goes in your work environment I don't know how many people work in a non-dailyed environment but there is that opportunity when you can work in a nice space and it generally comes down to a simple matter would you rather work in a basement or would you rather work in a window window environment and there's that matter what the studies show is how we are more productive less absenteeism better health reports there are a lot of things that tie in with daylighting that make sense it doesn't necessarily mean that solar and PV and generating power but there is an important benefit to using daylighting maximizing proper design in your space now daylighting only needs in our typical design we only need a very small footprint on the roof typically 5% or less so we do many projects where we tie the two systems together both for daylighting and PV or wind or whatever someone else might be trying to put on the roof in order to create the most positive environment whether to work or generate power to save power in their business place so the basic message with daylighting is just reducing your consumption by turning off your electric lights being able to do that in a control manner whether it's automated or not and our most famous client that we work with is Walmart they daylight every space we've done over 3,000 of their stores and we're not bragging about what we do they've studied in building design and their construction methods they typically turn off their electric lights about 3,000 hours per year per store so a typical return on investment for that type of property is less than two years so there's significant savings by daylighting space and that goes right to the bottom line so for those that are in business or in the commercial environment it's a very typically simple technology that gets overlooked often but as you can see in the illustration there are a lot of opportunities there for savings with daylighting so thank you very much I think Eric once again that just shows in terms of the business case that can be made over and over again and in our previous session we were talking a little bit about buildings and obviously this is an important piece just like with PVs and solar water except how they all can help buildings be zero net energy and produce everything that they need and perhaps more so as we really think about how we design and redesign our built environment so let's open it up for alright this is great well let's see Richard over here in the corner first we have a global competition I think it's here to mention China and I don't understand they've dominated the sort of technology not only in mass volume but the net generation and the second question I have to allow me is we also talked about spending a lot of money what happens when students' money is dry without the government capital doesn't step up to you first one, China I'm happy to say that for most of your conceptions or thoughts on China is not quite accurate the United States invented photovoltaics about 54 years ago out of Bell Labs we were the largest manufacturer of photovoltaics up until 1997 and then we lost leadership to Japan in fact it really wasn't until this last year where the Chinese actually achieved a significant presence in the sense of number of manufacturers it's been coming for a long time and their manufacturing capability is outstanding just in the sense of volume in large part because of the subsidies that they receive from the Chinese government and the provincial governments to encourage new manufacturing facilities so it's difficult for us to compete in that kind of environment in the sense of manufacturing but having said that the manufacturing tax credit that was created in the Recovery Act was actually supported 60 new manufacturing facilities here in the United States so there's at least 60 new plants under construction this year to produce solar in some capacity it could be mirrors for the big utility so that's great to see it's amazing what just one little incentive will do in order to spur the investment here in the United States what we're also seeing is a lot of the Chinese invest in the U.S. with respect to new manufacturing facilities so SunTek is opening up they're one of the largest manufacturers in the world New York Stock Exchange traded company that's Chinese headquarter they're opening up a facility just outside of Phoenix, Arizona and you're seeing similar plans in a bunch of others so that's very encouraging at least to open up a manufacturing here on the technology side though the United States still dominates I'd say without question not only on the efficiency but also on the manufacturing side applied materials as an example of one company that makes equipment that manufactures solar spire and others are still kind of viewed as the world standard for high quality low cost equipment Swiss make great equipment as well but when it comes to panel efficiency and panel technology I would say it's the United States and the Germans that really dominate that sector and will continue to and certainly the next generation of thin films or higher efficiency panels are coming out of the United States Australia, Germany and Japan less so from China China's more of the low efficiency, low cost producer for solar panels your second question is what happens to the industry once the recovery act dollars dry up well a lot of the recovery act dollars went to basically to government procurement or to rebuild schools or other buildings that basically solar had an option as one of the options for inclusion and so we've seen a fair number of projects that have included solar which is great you've also seen some of the changes like the treasury grant program the manufacturing tax credits there's a real impact on the industry if the treasury grant program expires and the reason why is Wall Street hasn't come back the tax equity markets aren't there there's new players that have come in but still we're looking at a fraction of the amount that's needed for solar and wind and just to give you a sense we talk about a 30% tax credit find you bring an investor who can use it well there's a transaction cost for that and what we're seeing now is that over 50% of the value of that tax credit gets consumed by a tax equity investor in that project a tax equity investor so what it meant basically is that a 30% credit that was intended to build projects over half of that was going into the to line the pockets of Wall Street investors that's crazy so we need a mechanism that puts the money into the projects and that's a treasury grant program so hopefully we'll see that extended I just add a little bit to what Ron said and that is that when you look at some of the advances in technology the leading thin film company solar they're an American company the amount of venture capital that has been put into other competing new technologies in the United States is staggering and it's far greater than what's going on any place else in the world so I think if we end up with a reasonable sort of policy framework that will support this stuff we're going to do okay once this money runs out if I could add just one thing about there is no incentive for daylighting currently so if you talk to your congressman it is something that we are lobbying and trying to push that agenda I should say the only daylighting incentive currently available is for a fiber optic skylight which has virtually no application for practical use it's a really neat product I've seen it it does work but anyway just if you do happen to run into your congressman or a staffer you might mention how daylighting could save a 117 million kilowatt hours per year it would be significant okay here first any of the homeowner association sometimes in certain states in many states the homeowner's associations have covenants that could effectively allow your neighbors to borrow you from putting up a solar system of any sort those things are outlawed in some states but in many states they're not and there is a move to try and get some sort of national standard we've had it in several pieces of legislation and certainly if we see an energy bill it's here we'd expect to see it included as well there's very little opposition to it just to give you a quick little anecdote when Al Gore decided he wanted to put solar panels on his house in Tennessee he wasn't allowed to obviously he filed an appeal and within six months they reversed it but that's a major institutional barrier for a lot of people from going solar here right over here first my question to you are you talking to various policy makers about extending and changing the incentives that are available are they hearing you talk about what's happened in Germany was it even there from the result was it a high change here in the US the ripple effect that we have seen in the industry is that we're building projects here in our smaller market that are significantly based on policy change that happened in Germany and I'm just curious if you're seeing the politicians listen to that as an example of what's coming in the strategy the question was based on basically the feed-in tariff in Germany which is a policy structure that gives you a guaranteed rate based on each kilowatt hour you generate and multiple technologies and structures and all and the Spanish model really was probably a disaster in the way the policy was structured it was over incentivized it overheated the market the government put a hard cap on it and subsequently pummeled the PV market and it's a large part of why we've seen the price come down by 40% in the last 18 months which is ultimately good for a consumer just bad for business certainly trying to sell into that market or operate in that market I think there is a pretty good realization of policy structure what's worked what doesn't work and then ultimately we need to take a cost-based structure which we have right now in a federal investment tax credit and turn it into a performance-based structure and that comes more in either a national renewable portfolio standard with a DG carve out or with a carbon cap and trade program where you can monetize the carbon-free credits that you would have as a business owner to be able to sell those into the market and that ultimately is the streamer we need to go to from a cost-based incentive and I think people recognize that but I think there's also increasingly an acute awareness you can't have subsidies that can turn on and turn off and turn on and turn off and expect to play in a global market to go back to the first question the Chinese they don't have much of a market yet but they're selling into the global market and I think ultimately they have a feed-in tariff and they'll be buying a lot of their own panels we're not going to be able to compete in what is clearly going to be one of the greatest economic opportunities of all of our lifetimes if we don't have any kind of policy stability and remember the Germans have this policy in place for 20 years we're not great in the United States about long-term strategic planning we're really good at reacting to crises and doing those kinds of things although maybe the Gulf of Mexico isn't a good example right now but it does certainly at responding to crises so hopefully we won't get to that point where we're in a crisis in the industry before they extend the programs okay clear in the back first just a quick question can you comment on the growth of the solar thermal hot water industry and also any efforts or success or traction you've had in getting legislation which would build into the code that new construction would require for example the solar hot water yeah happy to so solar water heating is a very cost effective technology today we saw the solar water heating industry grow by about 10% in 2009 we found that it's one industry that frankly is impacted by a downturn in Congress so even though solar water heating went up by 10% another segment of that which is solar pool heating has from a BTU perspective basis a much greater impact on displacing fossil fuels actually fell by 10% now there's no subsidies for solar pool heating but there are for solar water heating that is an industry that's poised for great growth this year there's new programs not only in Hawaii but in California in particular and some northeastern states where solar water heating is allowed to qualify for the renewable folio standard so we fully expect that industry to double this year as well we'll have to see how that takes shape your second part of your question was right it's tough obviously they're revising the building codes now and we're certainly trying to get that in place a mandate to use solar water heating probably won't occur on a national basis in the United States unfortunately although it is occurring on a state by state basis in Hawaii every home that's built has to have solar water heating you certainly see that in Israel and Spain and Portugal and other countries but there's no reason why it couldn't be required here it's just that command and control appetite of Congress probably doesn't exist as much today what we'd like to see in the building code though is at least you're building in the copper piping into the new home construction so that it's a viable option if the consumer wants you don't have to build it on the outside or split open your walls you're just building a conduit if you will we have tried to preach to home builders about making your homes solar ready and consider siding and consider having at least the chaseway so you can run the stuff from the roof whether it be for solar thermal or PV great question an important thing over here first we've just got a couple minutes left the idea of charging EVs through solar in residences or institutions electric vehicle charging through solar panels but also through household and institutional moves we have been approached by a number of companies that are developing solar charging stations of various types for solar options there's some stimulus money for that and that stuff is ongoing I mean I think that you're going to really see that more and more as we start getting some real penetration of the electric vehicle market like when the Volt comes out in the fall we're going to start seeing stuff like that our chief technology officer has a PV system and he has a Prius that's tricked out with a lot of additional batteries and he can go 180 miles or something like that without a charge and he's got a charging station at his house but it's really just beginning we'd be happy to sort of put a little hook up in your garage or whatever yeah no problem business opportunities on the way alright right here talk fast and you can both go okay so if I understand your question right solar rex, S-rex solar thermal rex can you describe your question a little bit more is there a particular state that you're in we don't have renewable energy credits we're about to we tried this year but I'm also president of the regional chapter of SEA for DC Maryland and Virginia and one of the things that as an association we tried to get through in Maryland was an adjustment of the state RPS to include solar thermal for credits for S-rex to qualify for S-rex we got beat back by the utilities on that one we did not win it yeah we tried it did not pass it did not get out of committee Maryland's state house yeah so there's not everybody loves solar and there's obviously some major players that keep us beat down pretty hard but there is legislation offered up by Senator Feinstein for a federal renewable portfolio standard that would allow solar water heating to qualify from California okay I have some questions the highest efficiency solar panel made that's in regular commercial production is from Sunpower Corporation which is an American corporation they're between 19 and 20% efficient they're actually manufactured in the Philippines the highest efficiency conventional silicon solar cell is from a lab at the University of New South Wales by a professor named Martin Green and he's in Australia those are the best so you're referring to you're referring to First Solar's thin film panel now that's the lowest cost manufactured panel in the world their new factories are manufacturing this at 85 cents per watt okay the commercial rate the wholesale rate is probably around 210 to 15 per watt something like that so there are by far the market leader don't worry about efficiency it's about cost per watt ultimately that you want to see now you don't want to produce a 2% efficient panel that's worthless but once you get above 10% it's really about cost per watt and applications so in the case of First Solar yes they're using different technology it's a thin film technology using cadmium and tellurium and it is a lower efficiency technology production technology you then look at crystalline silicon and there's a wide range of different products there and as Tony pointed out the world leader is Sunpower and that's a U.S. company now when you look at the average manufactured wattage in China I guarantee it's not 15% the vast majority of companies in China are making an amorphous silicon product that frankly can't come into the United States but it's going to probably cover around 6 to 8% efficiency yes there are crystalline silicon products that are made by companies like Suntech and Yingli and Trina that are spectacular really high quality products in that 14-15% range maybe but certainly I would say there's a pretty broad spectrum of manufacturers and costs and that the consumer has to decide which one is more important to them I feel very regretful that we're going to have to end this session because I know that there are a lot more questions and it would be great to have further conversation but I want to thank our speakers that was terrific and thank you all