As support for renewable energies, including photovoltaics, remains a highly politicized topic in the shadow of a looming Presidential election, predictions for the U.S. market at SPI remain cautiously optimistic. While pv magazine can report that initial traffic does appear down on last year, a speech by former President Bill Clinton may attract bigger crowds tomorrow. Clinton, who has shown support for photovoltaics in the past, may take aim at the Republican Partys outspoken and strident criticism of support for renewable energy.
The Orange County Convention Center, which is hosting this years SPI, is the second biggest of its kind in the U.S. and also sports one of the countrys largest rooftop photovoltaic installations, with a capacity of 1 MW.
The SPI opened with a Q&A session with Rhone Resch, president of the U.S. Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), where he cautioned that a hostile political environment could slow the growth of photovoltaics. Resch spoke of the ongoing negative publicity in the wake of Solyndras failure and how consumer awareness, as to the advantages of photovoltaics, is low in many states including the SPI host state of Florida.
At the Q&A, Resch spoke of the declining project pipeline for large utility-scale installations, and warned that administrative or political impediments may slow down growth in the residential sector. The SEIA president indicated that solar leasing is a major trend in the U.S. in the residential segment, although pointed to impediments to "third party financing" of photovoltaics in some states.
In a sign of continuing consolidation in photovoltaics, the expected number of visitors and exhibitors at SPI 2012 are down on last year. The show closes on Thursday.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.