EERE 2008 Solar Power Plan

Yesterday Alexander Karsner, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy , presented his departments’ FY 2008 budget request before the House Appropriations Committee.  Included in this request is $148.3 million for solar energy programs – an increase of nearly double FY 2006 levels.  Interestingly nearly the entire budget - $137 million - is directed at photovoltaics (PV) research and development, citing it as the solar technology that has “the greatest potential to reach cost-competitiveness and grid parity by or before 2015.”

Of additional interest is the departments’ pledge to “emphasize the importance of interconnection standard procedures and net metering regulations that are designed to accommodate solar and other clean distributed energy systems.”  While product support and research is important, long term planning of this sort is exactly what is needed in order for solar power to have broad appeal.  The ability for individual solar power producers to connect to the grid and receive payment back for excess generation capacity will be the deciding factor in large-scale adoption of solar power.

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