Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

Rhone Resch listened carefully Friday as Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced “SunShot,” a new federal initiative with the ambitious goal of reducing the total cost of photovoltaic (PV) solar power systems by 75 percent by the end of the decade.

Resch liked what he heard.

As president and CEO of the nation’s largest solar trade organization, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), Resch calls the initiative “significant because DOE is focusing on driving down the cost of the other components of a solar system” — not just the cost of PV cells. In a statement following Chu’s announcement, Resch said that the cost of PV panels has been cut in half in the last two years, so focusing on other aspects is the right approach.

The $27 million SunShot initiative focuses on four areas:

• Increasing the efficiency of the solar manufacturing process
• Optimizing the performance of the installation
• Improving solar PV technologies
• Streamlining the permitting process

Not to minimize the importance of the first three areas on the list, but it is the fourth item — reducing solar “soft costs” — that is bound to please the solar industry.

Read the complete article at my Forbes blog, Edison 2.0

Photo of the Sun, with a scaled photo of the Earth above it (© 2011 Osha Gray Davidson)

Since we have a current satellite HD photo of the Sun on this page every day (courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory), we wanted to put the features seen on the Sun in perspective. See that tiny blue dot above the Sun? That’s our home, superimposed in true scale on the image of the sun.

It’s easy to see how the sun has such a tremendous influence on the Earth, and why solar power has so much promise.

President Nasheed installing solar panels on his Maldive residence.

While solar enthusiasts were still celebrating President Obama’s decision to install solar panels on the White House roof, 9,000 miles away, Mohamed Nasheed was on the roof of his residence in Male, the capital of the Maldive islands, installing the last panels in his new 11.5 kW solar array.

Of course, people throughout the world install solar PV every day. What makes Nasheed’s work noteable, is that he is president of the Maldives, and the panels were going up on the Mulee Aage, the ‘White House’ of that island nation.

“The Maldives stands at the front line of climate change and we don’t have the luxury of time to sit and wait for the rest of the world to act,” said Nasheed. “We are getting to work to start the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

With average elevation of 1.5 meters above sea level (just under five feet), the Maldives is extraordinarily vulnerable to climate-caused sea level increase.

The solar installation is just one part of the president’s plan to become the first carbon-neutral nation by 2020, a goal Nasheed announced in March, 2009.

He explained the reasons behind the ambitious goal in a BBC interview at the time.

“Basically, we don’t want to sit around and blame others, but we want to do whatever we can, and hopefully, if we can become carbon-neutral, and when we come up with the plan, we hope that these plans also will serve as a blueprint for other nations to follow. We think we can do it, we feel that everyone should be engaged in it, and we don’t think that this is an issue that should be taken lightly.”

The Mulee Aage President's Residence

The solar system was designed by California-based Sungevity using 50 PV panels made by the Korean electronics giant, LG. Other major components were manufactured by KACO manufacturing.