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36–001PS 2007

RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND TRAINING

PROGRAMS TO FACILITATE ADOPTION

OF SOLAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND

ENVIRONMENT

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 19, 2007

Serial No. 110–41

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.science.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

HON. BART GORDON, Tennessee, Chairman

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California

MARK UDALL, Colorado

DAVID WU, Oregon

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois

NICK LAMPSON, Texas

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona

JERRY MCNERNEY, California

PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana

BARON P. HILL, Indiana

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio

RALPH M. HALL, Texas

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR.,

Wisconsin

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

KEN CALVERT, California

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

JO BONNER, Alabama

TOM FEENEY, Florida

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska

VACANCY

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

HON. NICK LAMPSON, Texas, Chairman

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona

JERRY MCNERNEY, California

MARK UDALL, Colorado

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

BART GORDON, Tennessee

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

RALPH M. HALL, Texas

JEAN FRUCI Democratic Staff Director

CHRIS KING Democratic Professional Staff Member

SHIMERE WILLIAMS Democratic Professional Staff Member

ELAINE PAULIONIS Democratic Professional Staff Member

ADAM ROSENBERG Democratic Professional Staff Member

ELIZABETH STACK Republican Professional Staff Member

STACEY STEEP Research Assistant

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C O N T E N T S

June 19, 2007

Page

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3

Opening Statements

Prepared Statement by Representative Nick Lampson, Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................... 8

Statement by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Vice Chair, Subcommittee

on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S.

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 5

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6

Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................... 7

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 7

Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................... 8

Witnesses:

Mr. Herbert T. Hayden, Solar Technology Coordinator, Arizona Public Service

Company, Phoenix, Arizona

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 9

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 11

Biography .......................................................................................................... 14

Mr. Rhone Resch, President, Solar Energy Industries Association

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 15

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 17

Biography .......................................................................................................... 23

Ms. Jane M. Weissman, Executive Director, Interstate Renewable Energy

Council; Vice Chair, North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 24

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 25

Biography .......................................................................................................... 28

Mr. Joseph T. Sarubbi, Professor/Department Chair, Building Systems Technology Department, Hudson Valley Community College

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 29

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 31

Biography .......................................................................................................... 40

Dr. Daniel E. Arvizu, Director, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S.

Department of Energy

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 41

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 43

Discussion

Solar Energy in Germany .................................................................................... 49

Solar Check-off Program ...................................................................................... 50

Comparison of Solar Energy to ANWR .............................................................. 51

Page

IV

More on Solar Check-off Program ....................................................................... 52

Manufacturing Cost for Solar Energy ................................................................ 53

Tax Incentives for Solar Energy ......................................................................... 54

Tax Incentives and Net Metering of Solar Energy ............................................ 55

More on Solar Check-off Program ....................................................................... 55

Storage and Efficiency of Solar Energy .............................................................. 56

Characterization of Support for Solar Energy ................................................... 57

Comparison of Centralized to Distributed Solar Energy .................................. 58

Net Metering ........................................................................................................ 58

Reliability of Solar Energy .................................................................................. 59

Solar Workforce Training Program .................................................................... 59

More on Solar Workforce Training ..................................................................... 61

Efficiency of Solar Energy ................................................................................... 63

Storage for Solar Energy ..................................................................................... 64

Conversion to Hydrogen ...................................................................................... 65

More on Solar Check-off Program ....................................................................... 65

More on Solar Check-off Program ....................................................................... 67

More on Storage for Solar ................................................................................... 68

Water Use for Concentrating Solar Power ......................................................... 69

Concentrating Solar Power .................................................................................. 70

More on Solar Workforce Training ..................................................................... 71

More on Solar Check-off Program ....................................................................... 72

Appendix 1: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Mr. Herbert T. Hayden, Solar Technology Coordinator, Arizona Public Service

Company, Phoenix, Arizona ................................................................................ 76

Mr. Rhone Resch, President, Solar Energy Industries Association ..................... 80

Ms. Jane M. Weissman, Executive Director, Interstate Renewable Energy

Council; Vice Chair, North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners ................................................................................................................... 83

Mr. Joseph T. Sarubbi, Professor/Department Chair, Building Systems Technology Department, Hudson Valley Community College .................................. 85

Dr. Daniel E. Arvizu, Director, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S.

Department of Energy ......................................................................................... 88

Appendix 2: Additional Material for the Record

Discussion Draft, June 14, 2007 ............................................................................. 92

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RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAMS TO FACILITATE ADOPTION OF

SOLAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES

TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Gabrielle Giffords

[Vice-Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.

2

3

HEARING CHARTER

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Research, Education and Training

Programs to Facilitate Adoption

of Solar Energy Technologies

TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 2007

10:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. 2318 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING

Purpose

On Tuesday, June 19, 2007 the House Committee on Science & Technology, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment will hold a hearing to receive testimony on

the Discussion Draft sponsored by Rep. Giffords which establishes several important

research, education, and training programs to facilitate the adoption of solar energy

technologies.

This bill addresses issues in solar research, education, and training not covered

by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. These include a research and development program on thermal energy storage technologies for concentrating solar power, a study

to determine the necessary steps to integrate concentrating solar power plants with

the regional and national electric grid, a program to ensure that a sufficient number

of people are properly trained to install and maintain solar energy equipment, and

the establishment of a solar energy research and information program, modeled on

similar such programs for the beef and dairy industries. The program is supported

by pooling funds from the private sector for the research and promotion of the solar

power industry as a whole.

This hearing will seek to address the following issues relating to the discussion

Draft:

• Is thermal energy storage technology important to the viability of concentrating solar power? Would the increased research and development on thermal storage proposed significantly accelerate the advancement of this technology?

• Would a study on how to integrate concentrating solar power plants with the

regional and national electric grid be useful?

• Is there a sufficient number of people trained to install and maintain solar

energy equipment to meet the current and future needs of the solar industry?

Are such programs necessary or useful for prospective solar panel installers

and potential consumers?

• How would the solar research and information program for the solar industry

authorized in the bill help to support research and promote the adoption of

solar power across the Nation?

Background

The Discussion Draft contains 4 basic components, as described above. The first

two are specifically related to concentrating solar power (CSP). A 2006 report by the

Western Governors’ Association assessed the overall near-term potential for CSP capacity in the American Southwest, taking into account areas of high solar ray intensity, near-level land, non-sensitivity to CSP use, and proximity to transmission. The

resulting set of potential plant sites totaled 200 GW of potential power production.

To put this in perspective, the electric generating capacity of the entire United

States is currently about 1,000 GW. Some significant challenges remain to widespread implementation of CSP, however.

CSP plants produce electric power by converting the sun’s energy into high-temperature heat using various mirror configurations. The heat is then channeled

through a conventional generator. These plants consist of two parts: one that collects solar energy and converts it to heat, and another that converts heat energy

4

to electricity. Thermal energy storage technology allows this heat to be retained for

later use in generating electricity, such as during periods of passing clouds or into

the evening. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 establishes a CSP research and development program, but storage is not included in the language. Section 3 of the Discussion Draft authorizes a program dedicated to advancing research and development

in thermal energy storage for CSP. Section 4 of the Discussion Draft tasks the Department of Energy (DOE) with conducting a study on methods to integrate concentrating solar power with regional electricity transmission systems, and to identify

new transmission or transmission upgrades needed to bring electricity from high

concentrating solar power resource areas to growing electric power load centers

throughout the United States. The results of this study will help define a roadmap

for large-scale implementation of CSP to meet the Nation’s growing energy needs.

The other two components of Discussion Draft address the solar industry in general. Having a certified, well-trained workforce to install and maintain solar energy

products is critical to the success of the industry. Some states, such as New York

and Florida, working with local community colleges, businesses, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), and the North American Board of Certified Energy

Practitioners (NABCEP) have recently established successful programs to create a

workforce to meet local demand, however there is currently no federal program to

help establish or improve these training programs across the Nation. Section 5 creates such a program, authorizing $10 million in each year from FY08 through FY12.

This section instructs DOE to ensure sufficient geographic distribution of training

programs nationally, and to only award grants for programs certified by the Institute of Sustainable Power or equivalent industry-accepted quality-control certification institution, or for new and growing programs with a credible path to certification.

A successful model for promoting a particular U.S. commodity, rather than an individual brand, has been demonstrated by the agriculture industry. Funded entirely

by a small portion of industry revenues and overseen by the USDA, organizations

such as the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board and the National Dairy

Board were created to coordinate mutually beneficial research efforts and increase

awareness of their industry as a whole, as well as ensure that consumers knew the

proper certification standards to seek out before making a purchase. Modeled after

these examples, Sections 6–13 create the Solar Industries Research and Promotion

Board, overseen by DOE, which would similarly plan and conduct mutually beneficial solar industry research efforts, increase awareness of solar as an energy option

across the Nation, and ensure that consumers know what certifications a technician

should have for installation or maintenance of solar energy equipment. The Solar

Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has expressed a strong interest in creating

such a program.

Witnesses

• Mr. Herbert Hayden is the Arizona Public Service (APS) Solar Technology

Coordinator. Mr. Hayden will testify on how thermal storage research and development and the bill’s proposed studies on grid integration and water usage

will help advance the implementation of concentrating solar power.

• Mr. Rhone Resch is the President of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). Mr. Resch will testify on how the proposed research and information for the solar industry would help to support research and promote the

adoption of solar power across the Nation.

• Ms. Jane Weissman is the Executive Director of the Interstate Renewable

Energy Council (IREC), and the Vice-Chair of the North American Board of

Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP). Ms. Weissman will testify on the

current status of workforce training in solar installation and maintenance

across the country, and the need for a national solar workforce training program.

• Prof. Joseph Sarubbi is the Chair of the Building Systems Technology Department at Hudson Valley Community College. Prof. Sarubbi will testify on

his ground-level experience in creating a solar workforce training program, including his partnership with local businesses and the State of New York in

developing a successful curriculum.

• Dr. David Arvizu is the Director of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Dr. Arvizu will testify on the DOE’s current

solar research and development activities, and on his views regarding the proposed legislation.

5

Ms. GIFFORDS. Welcome to today’s hearing entitled ‘‘Research,

Education and Training Programs to Facilitate Adoption of Solar

Energy Technologies.’’ I want to thank Chairman Gordon, Ranking

Member Hall, Chairman Lampson and Ranking Member Inglis for

holding this hearing on solar energy this morning. Solar energy offers one of the best solutions to the greatest challenges facing our

nation, global warming, dependence on foreign oil and concerns

about American competitiveness.

It has tremendous potential across the United States, especially

in regions like Southern Arizona, where we have over 300 days of

sunshine every single year.

Solar energy, as we all know, is a nonpartisan issue. The sun

beats down on Republicans and Democrats and Independents with

equal intensity, and we could all benefit from harnessing the power

of the sun. It stimulates business development. It creates new jobs,

helps protect our environment, and promotes energy independence.

My legislation, entitled the Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act of 2007, will move solar energy forward by targeting some

of the gaps that several experts have identified in our national

solar energy strategy.

Today we are going to hear from experts on the discussion draft

that was earlier circulated. This is a great first step in the overall

solar energy agenda for the 110th Congress. I am considering other

pieces of legislation and I know that other House committees are

looking at solar-related bills as well. As we move forward, the cumulative efforts to focus on the use of solar energy should be very

positive.

Let me briefly summarize the four components of this bill. The

first component would establish a Thermal Energy Storage Research and Development Program within the Department of Energy. This will help us solve perhaps the most significant problem

with concentrated solar power technology: energy storage. We need

more advanced technology so that we can store solar energy produced during the day and use it at night or on a cloudy day. This

is all about energy reliability and viability. We need to assure the

public that they will have enough electricity when the sun goes

down and when they need it.

The second component would require DOE to conduct two concentrating solar power commercial application studies. One would

study methods to integrate concentrated solar power energy into

regional electricity transmission systems. The best time of the day

to produce and use solar energy is from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We need

to research how to connect the major solar power plants to the electric grid, relieve expensive demand on electric utilities and use

solar energy during these peak hours. It also makes sense to examine how to bring electricity from high solar resource areas like Arizona and Nevada to other parts of the United States that have

other energy needs as well.

The other study would require DOE to inform Congress on methods to reduce the amount of water consumed by concentrating solar

power systems. CSP has its greatest potential in the southwest

United States, and like all power plants, it requires tremendous

use of water. Given the strain on water resources already in this

6

region, we must research ways to research water consumption so

that we can realize the benefits of CSP technology.

The third component of the legislation will authorize a competitive grant program at DOE to create and strengthen solar industry

workforce training and internship programs in installation, operation and maintenance of solar energy products. The goal of this

program is to ensure an adequate supply of well-trained individuals to support the expansion of the solar energy industry. If we

want to increase our use of solar energy, we have to make sure

that we have a trained and qualified workforce. This section will

promote job growth in a fast-growing solar industry.

Lastly, we have got beef for dinner and we have all got milk, but

who has gone solar? The fourth component of this bill will create

a Solar Energy Industries Research and Commercial Application

Board to plan and coordinate projects of research and commercial

application, certification, information and other purposes of benefit

to the application of solar technologies and educate people on why

we need to be doing this. This public-private partnership will also

help the general public understand how they can benefit from solar

energy technology. I want to note that this program will be paid

for by the solar industry and will cost the taxpayer absolutely nothing. It is important to my constituents and all the other people’s

constituents as well.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the

aisle to pass this important legislation.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Giffords follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE GABRIELLE GIFFORDS

I want to thank Chairman Gordon, Ranking Member Hall, Chairman Lampson,

and Ranking Member Inglis for holding this hearing on solar energy today.

Solar energy offers one of the best solutions to the greatest challenges facing our

nation—global warming, dependence on foreign oil, and concerns about American

competitiveness.

It has tremendous potential across the United States, especially in regions like

Southern Arizona, where we have over 300 days of sunshine every year.

Solar energy is a non-partisan issue. The sun beats down on Democrats, Republicans, and Independents with equal intensity, and we can all benefit from harnessing the power of the sun.

It stimulates business development, creates new jobs, helps protect our environment, and promotes energy independence.

My legislation, entitled the Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act of 2007,

will move solar energy forward by targeting some of the gaps that several experts

have identified in our national solar energy strategy.

Today, we will hear expert opinions on the discussion draft that was circulated.

This is a great first step in the overall solar energy agenda for the 110th Congress. I am considering other pieces of legislation, and I know that other House committees are looking at solar-related bills. As we move forward, the cumulative efforts to advance the use of solar energy should be very positive.

Let me briefly summarize the four components of this bill.

The first component would establish a ‘‘Thermal Energy Storage Research and

Development Program’’ within the Department of Energy. This will help us solve

perhaps the most significant problem with concentrating solar power technology: energy storage. We need more advanced technology so that we can store solar energy

produced during the day and use it at night or on a cloudy day. This is all about

energy reliability and viability. We need to assure the public that they will have

enough electricity when the sun goes down.

The second component would require DOE to conduct two ‘‘Concentrating Solar

Power Commercial Application Studies.’’

One would study methods to integrate concentrating solar power energy into regional electricity transmission systems. The best time of the day to produce and use

solar energy is from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. We need to research how to connect major solar

7

power plants to the electric grid, relieve expensive demand on electric utilities, and

use solar energy during these peak hours. It also makes sense to examine how to

bring electricity from high solar resource areas, like Arizona and Nevada, to meet

energy needs throughout the United States.

The other study would require DOE to inform Congress on methods to reduce the

amount of water consumed by concentrating solar power systems. CSP has its greatest potential in the Southwest United States, and like all power plants, it requires

the use of water. Given the strain on water resources in this region, we must research ways to reduce water consumption so that we can realize the benefits of CSP

technology.

The third component of this legislation will authorize a competitive grant program

at DOE to create and strengthen solar industry workforce training and internship

programs in installation, operation, and maintenance of solar energy products. The

goal of this program is to ensure an adequate supply of well-trained individuals to

support the expansion of the solar energy industry. If we want to increase our use

of solar energy, we have got to make sure that we have a trained, qualified workforce. This section will promote job growth in the fast-growing solar industry.

Lastly, we’ve got beef for dinner, and we’ve all got milk. But who’s gone solar?

The fourth component of this bill will create a Solar Energy Industries Research and

Commercial Application Board to plan and coordinate projects of research, commercial application, certification, information, and other purposes of benefit to the application of solar technologies. This public-private partnership will also help the general public understand how they can benefit from solar energy technology. I want

to note that this program will be paid for by the solar industry and will cost the

taxpayer absolutely nothing.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass

this important legislation.

Ms. GIFFORDS. The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member

from South Carolina, Mr. Inglis, for an opening statement.

Mr. INGLIS. I thank the Chair for holding this legislative hearing

on facilitating the adoption of solar energy technologies.

Solar energy occupies just a sliver of the global energy market.

However, when you consider the Earth receives more energy from

the sun in just one hour than the world uses in a whole year, it

makes sense that we should look into making that thin sliver into

a big piece of the energy pie. With some advancements in technology and conversion efficiencies, solar will fit the bill for our energy goals: clean, renewable and abundant.

Today we are going to discuss draft legislation that seeks to address ways that the Federal Government can help speed commercial viability of solar energy. I look forward to hearing from our expert panel of witnesses as to how we might meet our goals.

Madam Chairman, as we discuss these proposals today and move

to markup, I hope we give adequate time to make this bill as good

as it can be. America’s scientists, engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs realize the potential of solar power and other renewable

sources, and I hope we can set policies that facilitate the development, the best development of those sources.

Thank you again for holding the hearing and I look forward to

hearing from our witnesses.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Inglis follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE BOB INGLIS

Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this legislative hearing on

facilitating the adoption of solar energy technologies.

Solar energy occupies just a sliver of the global energy market. However, when

you consider that the Earth receives more energy from the sun in just one hour than

the world uses in a whole year, it makes sense that we should look into making

that thin sliver into a big piece of the energy pie. With some advancements in technology and conversion efficiencies, solar will fit the bill for our energy goals: clean,

renewable, and abundant.

8

Today, we’re going to discuss draft legislation that seeks to address ways that the

Federal Government can help speed commercial viability of solar energy. I look forward to hearing from our expert panel of witnesses as to how we might meet our

goals.

Mr. Chairman, as we discuss this proposal today, and move to markup, I hope

we give adequate time to make the bill as good as it can be. America’s scientists,

engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs realize the potential of solar power and

other renewable sources, and I hope we can set policies that facilitate the development of these sources.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Inglis.

If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening

statements, your statements will be added to the record at this

point.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Lampson follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN NICK LAMPSON

I am very pleased to be here this morning to discuss the legislation proposed by

my colleague from Arizona, Rep. Giffords. Solar energy holds great promise and potential to deliver clean, affordable electricity to homes and businesses across the Nation.

Rep. Giffords has identified several areas where federal support could further the

goal of diversifying our energy supply by expanding the adoption of solar energy

technologies. The basic and applied research and development programs that we

have invested in through the Department of Energy over the years have yielded significant advancements in solar energy technologies. Our challenge now is to move

these technologies into the market place more aggressively.

I also serve on the Committee on Agriculture. In the agricultural sector, USDA

has managed numerous promotion programs for agricultural commodities that have

helped to educate consumers about the nutritional benefits of different foods and

have expanded markets for all commodity producers. I believe it provides a good

model for solar energy technologies and will deliver additional applied research and

information designed to communicate with the general public to support the entire

solar industry.

My home State of Texas has moved aggressively to encourage the development

of renewable energy. We have abundant solar resources that could be used to further expand our renewable energy portfolio. As several of our witnesses will point

out today, the U.S. has significant solar potential that we are not yet taking full

advantage of. We can no longer afford to overlook obvious opportunities to diversify

our energy supply.

I commend my colleague for her work on this legislation and I look forward to

moving it forward in our committee very soon. We have an excellent panel of witnesses today that will help us to refine this legislation and expand our use of the

abundant, clean source of energy.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE JERRY F. COSTELLO

Good Morning. Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding today’s hearing to receive

testimony on the discussion draft legislation sponsored by Congresswoman Giffords.

The bill establishes research, education, and training programs to facilitate the

adoption of solar energy technologies.

My home State of Illinois has a plentiful supply of coal, which is why our region

specializes in clean coal research and demonstration projects. In the West, solar energy and thermal energy storage is also an environmentally friendly energy source.

Regardless of where you live in the country, I believe it is important to invest in

multiple energy sources to ensure the U.S. has diverse a energy portfolio.

Specifically, the Discussion Draft with regard to thermal energy storage addresses

an important issue related to solar energy and its impact on utilities. Adding thermal storage to concentrated solar power (CSP) plants enables solar energy to be a

potentially provided at a low cost, which is critical for our nation’s economy. Further, the discussion draft also addresses transmission integration, an important

issue for CSP plants.

9

Similar to clean coal technologies, cost is the greatest obstacle with regard to producing solar power. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on how the solar

research and information program for the solar industry authorized in the bill would

help to support research and promote the adoption of solar power across the Nation.

With that, I again thank the Chairman for calling this hearing.

Ms. GIFFORDS. At this time I would like to introduce our fabulous, fabulous panel of witnesses with some Arizona connections, I

would also like to point out. I always bring it back to Arizona. We

have Mr. Hayden, who is Solar Technology Coordinator for Arizona

Public Service Corporation. Mr. Rhone Resch is the President of

the Solar Energy Industries Association. Ms. Jane Weissman is the

Executive Director of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council and

the Vice-Chair of the North American Board of Certified Energy

Practitioners. I just have to mention that Ms. Weissman earlier has

talked about 1991 at the Westford Look Hotel in Tucson where a

lot of this work actually began, so I think that is pretty interesting.

We also have Professor Joseph Sarubbi, who is the Chair of the

Building Systems Technology Department at Hudson Valley Community College, and Mr. Daniel Arvizu, who is the Director of the

Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory

and originally from Douglas, Arizona. So that is very cool.

So as our witnesses should know, spoken testimony, we would

like to try to limit to five minutes after which the Members of the

Committee will have five minutes to ask questions, and as far as

I know, we are okay on time in terms of votes, so no particular

pressure here to speed through this. But let us get going with Mr.

Hayden, please.

STATEMENT OF MR. HERBERT T. HAYDEN, SOLAR TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR, ARIZONA PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANY, PHOENIX, ARIZONA

Mr. HAYDEN. Madam Chairman and Members of the Committee,

my name is Herbert T. Hayden. I am the solar technology coordinator for Arizona Public Service Company, APS, in Arizona. Thank

you for the opportunity to testify to you today regarding concentrating solar power, or CSP. CSP is a technology of great interest

to APS for its potential to provide lower cost and more-reliable

solar power in the desert Southwest.

I would like to submit my written comments to you and briefly

summarize them now on the main points, which are, number one,

the importance of thermal energy storage to the viability of concentrating solar power; number two, the importance of reduction of

water use to the viability of concentrating solar; and number three,

how a study to integrate concentrating solar power plants with the

electric grid can facilitate the commercialization and implementation of large-scale CSP.

APS is the largest and longest serving electric power utility in

Arizona, the fastest growing state in the Nation. We are adding

customers at three times the national average and electricity demand is growing at four times the national average. To meet this

rapid growth in electricity demand, Arizona’s electric utilities are

investing over $2 billion a year in infrastructure. Plans for the future include conventional generation, new transmission and distribution, and an increased focus on conservation and cost-effective

renewable energy resources.

10

In Arizona, our most abundant renewable resource is sunshine.

For the past 15 years, my responsibility has been to work with the

solar industry and researchers around the United States and the

world to bring lower cost and reliable solar electricity to our customers. From a technology perspective, our primary focus has been

on technologies that can be lower cost on a utility scale in the nearterm. As early as 1995, the APS STAR Center was a test site for

dish Stirling systems and for the advancement of concentrating PV

systems, both of which are forms of concentrating solar power.

Based on inquiries from companies around the world, it seems

clear that our work has helped stimulate the growing interest in

concentrating solar power technology.

One of the most successful CSP technologies to date are the solar

trough systems that use solar heat to drive turbine engines and

generators. For more than a decade, solar trough plants in California have been the largest collection of solar power in the world

and they have operated well. CSP is currently the most cost-effective solar technology for large-scale use and has the potential to

compete with conventional generation in the near- to mid-term.

Because of this potential, last year APS completed the first solar

trough plant in the United States in over 14 years, the one-megawatt APS Saguaro Solar Trough plant near Tucson, Arizona. Our

intent of that project was to help reestablish and again advance the

U.S. solar trough technology. In short order, the APS plant was followed by a much larger project in Nevada which has benefited from

the new solar collector design experience gained in the APS project.

An important attribute of the CSP systems is the ability to incorporate thermal storage into the design to improve the reliability of

power output. This is an extremely important feature that many

intermittent renewable resources such as PV and wind do not have.

All renewables have value for the ability to help reduce the use of

fossil fuels but the ability to store the thermal energy for times

when it is needed provides for a reliability that does not exist with

intermittent resources. This is especially critical to utilities because

they have the obligation to provide reliable power at all times. It

is commonly considered that solar provides power when it is needed the most, during the daytime. This is largely true but there are

fluctuations due to clouds and a rolloff of solar before the late day

hours of high power consumption. For example, power consumption

in Arizona reaches a peak in the months of July, August and September and the summer heat results in heavy air conditioning

loads. During that period, Arizonans use the most energy between

5 and 7 p.m. when they go home, increase the air conditioning and

do things for their lives. But unfortunately, the solar resource

peaks sometime in the mid-afternoon and tails off significantly as

the sun lowers on the horizon. Thermal storage has the potential

to bridge the gap between maximum solar generation and peak

customer demand by extending the hours of operation sufficiently

to cover much of the evening demand.

There has already been some support in the national labs for the

development of thermal storage concept and we recognize and appreciate that past support. However, the resources are apparently

limited in comparison to the substantial expense of a meaningful

development and test plant. Certainly a dedicated research and deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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velopment program on thermal storage could significantly accelerate the use of this promising technology.

Another key area for improvement of CSP is water use. The current design of large CSP plants use water simply for cooling a

power plant in the same way that water is used for conventional

power plant cooling. Though CSP technology has been successful

with its current water cooling approaches, growth in the desert has

placed ever-increasing demands on water use and reductions in

water use would increase the attractiveness of CSP.

On the third topic relating to CSP of the study of integrating

large CSP plants into the regional and national electric grid, it is

true that planning for CSP does raise numerous issues including

the availability of land, land-use issues such as water and permitting, and increasingly, the availability of transmission facilities and

transmission capacity to deliver the energy to load centers from the

areas where solar might be developed. Transmission is generally

constrained in much of the West and significant new transmission

investment is needed in the coming years for all types of generation, renewable or conventional. The Southwestern states and utilities, including APS, are considering the needs and benefits for

transmission to ensure a robust grid to meet the needs of the

West’s rapidly growing population. A federal study of the potential

for the integration of CSP into the transmission plans would be

timely and supportive of the further commercial implementation of

CSP and could help address the same kind of issues that have been

encountered in the successful growth of the wind industry.

So finally, we are currently leading a group of southwestern utilities in the exploration of a 250-megawatt CSP plant to be built in

the Southwest. In the process, we have run into these issues— transmission, water, et cetera. Also, land on federal land could be

considered.

So finally, I would just say that we believe, APS believes that

large-scale CSP has very good potential to provide cost-effective energy to the United States. We also believe that the U.S. industries

have still been a leader in concentrating technologies and have the

opportunity to benefit by that, and finally that CSP can be improved with the additional of thermal storage and with reduction

of water use and the proper integration of CSP in the national grid.

Thank you, Madam Chairman and the Members of the Committee for the opportunity to share these observations with you,

and I would be available to answer questions if I can. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hayden follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HERBERT T. HAYDEN

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, it is a pleasure to provide testimony

to you regarding 1) the importance of thermal energy storage technology to the viability of concentrating solar power, and 2) how a study to integrate concentrating

solar power plants with the electric grid can facilitate the commercialization and implementation of large-scale CSP.

Arizona Public Service Company (APS) is the largest and longest serving electric

power utility in Arizona. Arizona is also the fastest growing state in the United

States. APS is adding customers at three times the national average and our customers’ electricity demand is growing at four times the national average. To meet

this rapid growth in electricity demand Arizona’s electric utilities are investing over

$2 billion a year in infrastructure. Plans for the future include conventional generation, new transmission and distribution and an increased focus on conservation and

cost effective renewable energy resources.

12

In Arizona our most abundant renewable resource is sunshine. And, for the past

15 years, my responsibility has been to work with the solar industry and researchers around the U.S. and the world to bring lower cost and reliable solar electricity

to our customers.

APS’ first work in the solar technology area was .in 1954 when APS helped organize the first International Solar Energy Exposition in Phoenix, AZ that lead to the

formation of the International Solar Energy Society. In the 1970’s, APS applied

early solar PV technology in remote off-grid telecommunications applications, and

since the early 1980’s APS has been an active participant in the study and development of solar energy for large scale utility use.

In 1988, the APS Solar Technology Applied Research (STAR) center was developed to support the advancement of solar resources, including field operation of both

photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar technologies. Our early work at STAR

gave APS the expertise and experience to undertake several noteworthy projects including Arizona’s first customer-sited PV systems tied to the grid, and Arizona’s

first utility scale grid-tied solar PV system. APS is proud to provide solar services

to the National Park Service and several military bases in Arizona to assist with

the use of PV in support of remote off-grid operations. And, we currently have over

five MW of PV tracker power plants in operation providing reliable solar energy to

our customers.

From a technology development perspective our primary focus has been on large

scale solar technologies. As early as 1995, APS STAR center was a test site for the

dish Stirling systems, and the advancement of Concentrating PV (CPV) systems. We

have more then 10 years experience operating silicon CPV, and three years ago installed the Nation’s first grid-tied triple-junction high concentration PV system.

Based upon inquiries from companies around the world it seems clear that our CPV

work has helped stimulate new interest in CPV technology. And while there is significant CPV work now being undertaken in other countries, it is my belief that the

United States remains in the technological lead of this very promising solar technology.

In another very promising technology area, APS has supported the advancement

of concentrating solar power (CSP). These technologies are ‘‘thermal electric systems’’ that use solar heat to drive engines and generators. CSP thermal systems include solar trough concentrator systems and central receiver (power tower) systems

that use many mirrors to focus light on a central solar collector. CSP also include

solar dish Stirling systems and other advanced solar concepts.

The solar trough systems are worth particular note. For more then a decade solar

trough systems in California have been the largest collection of solar power in the

world, and they have operated well. CSP is also currently the most cost effective

solar technology and has the greatest potential to compete economically with conventional generation in the near to mid-term.

Because of this potential, just last year, APS constructed the first solar trough

plant in the U.S. in over 14 years. Our intent was to help to re-establish and again

advance the U.S. solar trough technology. The plant is the one MW APS Saguaro

Solar Trough plant, near Tucson, Arizona.

While not part of the Saguaro design, an important attribute of the solar thermal

CSP systems is the ability to incorporate thermal storage techniques into the design

to improve the reliability of power output. This is an extremely important feature

that many intermittent renewable resources such as PV and wind do not have.

While all renewables have value for their ability to help reduce the use of fossil

fuels, the ability to store the thermal energy for times when its needed provides a

level of reliability that does not exist with intermittent resources. This is especially

critical to utilities that have an obligation to provide reliable power at all times.

Common wisdom is that solar technologies produce power when it is needed the

most, during the daytime. While this is largely true, there are exceptions that are

not obvious such as fluctuations due to clouds and a mismatch to late-day power

consumption. This latter exception is the norm for Arizona and most of the desert

southwest. In the southwest, power consumption reaches its peak in the months of

July, August and September, when the summer heat result in heavy air conditioning loads. The correlation between power consumption and high summer temperatures are a good match for CSP however the correlation is not as perfect as one

might expect. In a 24 hour period, Arizonan’s use the most energy in the early

evening, between 5 and 7 p.m., when they return home from work, turn down the

air conditioning, cook dinner, do laundry and generally go about their lives. Unfortunately, solar electricity production, even from CSP, does not match this hourly demand profile very well. Solar electricity production reaches its peak levels sometime

in the mid-afternoon and tails off significantly in the early evening as the sun lowVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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ers on the horizon. Thermal storage has the potential to bridge the gap between

maximum generation and peak demand.

Without the availability of solar energy during the peak, utilities must look to

other reliable resources like natural gas to meet customer demand. But, thermal

storage has the real potential to change utility resource decisions because with storage CSP systems will be able to reliably serve customers when electricity costs are

the highest.

There currently exists some support in the national labs for the development of

the thermal storage concept, which we recognize and appreciate. However the resources are apparently limited in comparison to the substantial expense of a meaningful development and test plant. Certainly a dedicated research and development

program on thermal storage could significantly accelerate the use of this promising

technology.

The second topic of discussion relating to CSP is the integration of large CSP

plants into the regional and national electric grid. This topic raises numerous issues

including availability of land for large scale installation, land-use issues such as

water use and permitting and the availability of transmission facilities and transmission capacity to deliver the energy to load centers. The cost, timing and risks

associated with each of these factors must also be considered.

One additional aspect of large scale CSP that must be considered is the status

of financial incentives. Currently, the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for

solar has resulted in projected project costs that are significantly more competitive

than any time in the past. But without a long-term extension of the ITC, many large

scale CSP projects will never be launch due to the time it takes to address the

issues noted in the preceding paragraph. Large scale CSP plants require three to

five years from commitment to start up Today, the ITC is set to expire at the end

of 2008. The one to two year ITC extensions that have been typical in previous

years, will not provide sufficient certainty to enable major CSP development. Longterm extension of the ITC is critical to CSP development.

One critical aspect of the ITC is the fact that it is not available to public utilities.

The restriction needlessly narrows application of the credit and is unfair to U.S. citizens because the vast majority purchase power from a public utility, as it is defined

by the tax code. Therefore, a utility wishing to plan a large CSP resource would

need to assume no ITC, or secure a third-party owner of the plant. This current policy forcing a third-party relationship to take advantage of the ITC creates unnecessary uncertainty and costs to the system. It forces the utility and regional grid to

consider the operational and financial risks inherent in any third party relationship

thus affecting the utility operating strategies. These risks can certainly be analyzed

and managed but create a potential sub-optimum situation when they are the only

strategy available.

While there are numerous issues to be addressed, APS is bullish about CSP and

is leading a group of southwestern utilities exploring a 250 MW CSP plant in the

desert southwest. We have found several constraints to a successful project including the financial factors associated with the end of the ITC in 2008, and the lack

of transmission capacity. In fact, transmission is generally constrained in much of

the west and significant new transmission investment is needed in the coming years

for all types of generation be they renewable or conventional generation. New transmission is being planned throughout the west and in California and Texas specifically to access renewable resources including wind and geothermal. Others states

and utilities, including APS, are studying their needs for both intra and interstate

transmission to ensure a robust grid to meet the needs of the West’s burgeoning

population. The studies include the ability to reach those areas of the west with

abundant low cost renewable resources.

Answers to the questions about CSP, and indeed renewables in general, are not

simple. Intermittent renewable resources such as wind and solar present special

economic challenges for transmission investment because they do not efficiently utilize the transmission investment at all times. Wind integration studies have and are

being performed. We believe CSP has a significant potential to provide large

amounts of renewable energy to the U.S. and that a federal study on transmission

for large scale CSP would be beneficial and appropriate.

Finally the issue of locating large scale CSP on federal land should be investigated and analyzed. By its nature, solar technologies require significant geographic footprints. A general rule of thumb for a solar installation is five to 10 acres

per megawatt. That means for a single 250 megawatt facility, 1,250 to 2,500 contiguous acres of land would be required. Considering that the Federal Government is

the largest land owner in the U.S., a study of federal land in high solar resource

areas that may be made available for CSP development would also be beneficial and

appropriate.

14

In summary, APS is proud of its contributions to the advancement of solar technologies including CSP, but more needs to be done. APS believes that large scale

CSP has the best potential to provide cost effective solar energy to the U.S. and this

potential improves dramatically with the addition of thermal storage. Understanding how these large CSP installations will impact the regional and national

grid must be understood. We support federal funding for a CSP integration study.

We encourage additional federal attention and support for CSP and welcome the opportunity to continue to work with the U.S. national labs and the solar industry on

the further advancement of solar resources into our national energy portfolio.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and the Members of the Committee for the opportunity

to share these observations and opinions with you.

BIOGRAPHY FOR HERBERT T. HAYDEN

Since 1993, Herb Hayden has led the development, construction and operation of

solar power plants for APS, the largest and longest-serving electric utility in Arizona. Over six Megawatts (MW) of solar generation has been installed to date by

APS, including photovoltaic (PV) and advanced concentrator solar power systems

(CSP). These CSP systems include Concentrating PV (CPV) and one MW of Concentrating Solar Trough thermal generating systems.

Herb has managed the development of new solar technologies that have placed

APS in a leadership role for solar systems of particular promise for utility use.

These include larger-scale PV tracking systems using present-day commercial PV

panels, and the high concentration PV (CPV) and dish-engine systems that are

emerging to address the price and supply limitations of conventional PV products.

Much of this work is visible at the APS Solar Test And Research (STAR) center,

where new solar technologies are under test in the Arizona environment.

In addition to grid-connected solar, Herb initiated the development of the APS Remote Solar Electric Service. This program provided off-grid solar power services to

50 homes and ranches in Arizona, as well as several unique larger scale ‘‘solar hybrid’’ systems for military, national park and commercial customers in the U.S.

southwest and Mexico.

Herb is a PE in Arizona, having received his BSEE with honors from Arizona

State University in 1983. Prior to his solar work at APS, Herb performed project

management and engineering for APS telecommunications systems, and worked

four years at Motorola in the development of advanced electronic systems.

Solar technology participation areas:

• Over six MW of solar generation currently installed and operating

• Development and operation of 500 kW of CPV, in collaboration with Amonix

Inc.

• Formation of Concentrating Technologies LLC, developing an advanced new

triple-junction CPV product in collaboration with Spectrolab

• First Dish Stirling utility installation in Arizona, in collaboration with SAIC

and Stirling Thermal Motors, plus studies of advanced Dish Turbine concepts

• Demonstration of the solar generation of hydrogen using Dish Stirling, and

the reversible use of hydrogen to generate electricity using the Stirling engine

• Development of the APS large two-axis tracker system for high concentrating

solar (320 m2 per unit tracking area)

• Development of APS Single-Axis horizontal tracker PV system

• Development of APS Single-Axis Tilted Tracker PV system

• The first use, and APS development role in Shingleton single-axis tracker,

which later was purchased by Powerlight and sold as their Powertracker

• Formation of FWR LLC, manufacturer of solar tracking control electronics,

and data acquisition equipment

• Development of APS Remote Solar Electric Service, providing and maintaining small hybrid PV systems for service to remote homes, ranches and larger

scale uses

• Working relationships with NREL, Sandia National Labs, Arizona State University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Weizmann Institute of Science Solar

Institute

• Served as member of DOE Concentrating Solar Power Peer Review Commission, 2002

• Several patents, and several papers on high concentration PV and solar tracking systems, numerous international presentations

15

Patents:

• Four patents awarded for solar tracking systems and controls

• Four additional patent applications in process

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Hayden.

Mr. Resch, please.

STATEMENT OF MR. RHONE RESCH, PRESIDENT, SOLAR

ENERGY INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION

Mr. RESCH. Thank you, Chairman Lampson, Congresswoman

Giffords and the Members of the Subcommittee for providing me

the opportunity to testify on these important issues this morning.

My name is Rhone Resch. I am President of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group here in Washington that represents over 500 companies and over 20,000 people employed in the

U.S. solar energy industry including hundreds of small businesses

throughout the United States.

I would like to thank the Committee and its staff for providing

true leadership in advancing solar energy in the United States. A

key element of leadership is providing the opportunity to empower

others to lead and today you seek to empower individual Americans

to strengthen our energy independence, to become high-tech workers, adopters and advocates for solar technologies that can help

meet America’s energy challenges in the 21st century.

With regard to the establishment of a check-off program for

solar, I would like to convey three points. First, the high priority— the highest priority for the solar energy industry is the creation of

a long-term incentive for solar to help lower costs and provide a

clear market signal to manufacturers to actually expand production. Only then will we have a supply to meet the demand of an

educated market and only then will a check-off program succeed.

Second, solar energy technologies provide significant energy security, environmental, and economic benefits to the American public

and must be a significant part of our energy portfolio going forward. And third, the solar industry would greatly benefit from the

creation of a federal check-off program just as dozens of other U.S.

industries have benefited from these programs.

While solar prices have dropped by 90 percent in the last 25

years, solar is still two to three times as expensive as the national

retail electricity rates. Furthermore, the United States has been

eclipsed by Germany, Japan and China in the manufacturing and

use of solar. Incredibly, Germany installs eight times the amount

of solar each year as the United States despite having the same

amount of sunlight as Anchorage, Alaska, as you can see from this

map here. When you do look at that map, you can see that the

United States really does have world-class solar resources in all 50

states. Certainly if you can make solar work well in Germany, you

can make it work well in all 50 states in the United States. But

Germany enjoys market leadership because its government has enacted long-term incentive policies that have jump-started the installation market. Congress is currently considering legislation to

extend the federal solar investment tax credits for homeowners and

businesses, H.R. 550, the Securing America’s Energy Independence

Act. Specifically, these bills will create an eight-year extension in

expansion of the ITC for commercial systems and an eight-year exVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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tension in expansion for the residential systems. I want to commend Chairman Gordon, Subcommittee Ranking Member Inglis,

Congresswoman Giffords, Congressman Udall, Congressman Baird,

Congressman Bartlett, Congressman McCaul for co-sponsoring this

important legislation without which a check-off program would not

galvanize in the United States. We need to have this policy support

in place to make the domestic industry competitive in the global

marketplace for solar technologies, and I respectfully request that

the Committee reach out to Chairman Rangel of the Ways and

Means Committee and ask him to support the provisions in H.R.

550 and the tax title of the energy bill which will be marked up

tomorrow.

Solar energy is the Nation’s most abundant energy resource and

it can greatly improve the U.S.’s ability to have a secure and reliable energy supply. Solar requires no field to operate and our panels are warrantied to last for 20 to 25 years, and you will see a

panel being put up here in just a minute, and this is one of the

things to point out. Once you install—once you buy and install a

solar system on your house, it is like buying a car with all the gas

you will need for it for its entire lifetime. Sure, it has most of a

cost upfront but it will hedge the consumer against rising energy

prices in the future. And on a community scale, solar can help stabilize volatile electricity prices and relieve tight markets for natural gas by reducing demand during midday peak when the most

expensive, least efficient generation is used.

Moreover, solar is the cleanest method of electricity generation.

Electricity for solar produces no air pollution, no water pollution,

no noise pollution, no radiation, no solid waste, has no impact on

wildlife, except maybe inconveniencing the squirrels that are running around on your roof, and uses no water for generating electricity, an increasingly important issue for the fast-growing communities of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, California and Colorado,

as Herb just pointed out.

As we begin to tackle climate change in a real manner, keep in

mind that over the 40- to 50-year life of a solar electric system,

every kilowatt of solar electric power reduces 217,000 pounds of

CO2.

Finally, as today’s hearing demonstrates, there are tremendous

economic benefits to be gained form increasing our use of solar energy. Solar photovoltaic creates 32 jobs per megawatt, more than

any other form of energy. Solar could provide more than tens of

thousands of new jobs in the coming decade in manufacturing, engineering, construction and installation, investing America’s energy

dollars in America’s workers.

If we are to begin harnessing this potential, we must significantly increase consumer education and awareness of solar technologies. While the public strongly supports the increased use of

solar, market research shows a broad gap in the understanding

that solar electricity operates just like regular electricity and that

solar can work anywhere in the United States. Many outdated misconceptions exist that the technology must be overcome in order for

consumers’ use to increase of solar. As you can see, this is a solar

electric panel. Most people still think that solar looks like the technology on Skylab, checkerboard pattern, inefficient use. This is

17

made by a company in the United States. It looks like a flat-screen

TV. It is the most efficient panel made in the world, 22 percent efficient, absolutely gorgeous. I actually put it up on my house last

year. It generates about 85 percent of my electricity right here in

Washington, D.C. It is very exciting. But consumers lack the information on how to find solar companies and what solar products

might be available, and most solar installation companies are small

businesses, typically employing no more than a few dozen people

and lacking the budget to reduce a broad swath of consumers.

So in short, the solar industry needs to launch a national awareness campaign and numerous other industries have provided us

with a blueprint to do so. Congressionally created check-off programs have served as the backbone of many industries’ successful

promotion campaigns. Mr. Chairman, I am sure we are all familiar

with the dairy industry’s ‘‘Got Milk,’’ the cotton industry’s ‘‘Cotton,

The Fabric Of Our Lives’’ and the National Pork Board’s ‘‘Pork,

The Other White Meat.’’ But Mr. Chairman, no pork was involved

in the creation of these campaigns, at least no Congressional pork.

Rather, these industries pooled their resources through a comprehensive program to fund consumer education. A ‘‘Got Solar’’ program, if you will, would provide major benefits to the American

public. Consumers would be able to obtain market information on

product and company quality and become educated about local and

national energy use patterns. Meanwhile, local solar installers

would benefit from broad public outreach that they would otherwise be unable to afford and see the resultant growth in their business.

To be clear, consumer awareness is only one major obstacle to

the widespread use of solar and a check-off program can only work

if we have proper market incentives and market mechanisms in

place.

I want to thank the Committee for giving me the opportunity to

speak, and I am available to answer any questions that you may

have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Resch follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RHONE RESCH

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, for providing me

the opportunity to testify today.

On behalf of over 500 companies and more than 20,000 employees in the U.S.

solar energy industry, I would like to express support for the Solar Energy Research

and Advancement Act of 2007, legislation that would help solar energy to make

major strides in contributing to a clean, domestic, renewable supply of electricity

that is of, by, and for the American people. SEIA applauds Congresswoman

Gabrielle Giffords for her visionary leadership in introducing this bill.

My comments today will focus on the importance of a solar check-off program, or

‘‘Got Solar,’’ to the future utilization of solar energy resources in the U.S. Aside from

cost, the greatest obstacle to solar reaching a wider domestic market is education

and public awareness. With respect to a ‘‘Got Solar’’ program, I would like to convey

the following points:

• Greater use of carbon-smart, domestic solar energy would have myriad energy

security, economic, and environmental benefits for the American public.

• While the public broadly supports the greater use of solar energy, most Americans do not have a basic understanding of solar technology products or how

to purchase them.

18

• Educating the public on solar energy is primarily the responsibility of the

solar industry, but most solar installers are small businesses that lack the

means to reach a broader swathe of consumers.

• Building on dozens of U.S. industries’ successful examples, Congress should

establish a coordinated program of promotion and research, funded by industry at no cost to the government, to increase consumer education about solar

energy.

• Finally, a check-off program will only succeed if appropriate incentives are in

place, including an eight-year extension of the federal investment tax credits

(ITC).

Public Benefits of Solar Energy

The U.S. solar energy industry is growing and providing more carbon-smart, domestic energy every year. Solar energy technologies can provide major energy security, environmental, and economic benefits to the American public, all of which will

be realized with broader consumer awareness and adoption of solar.

Energy Security

As Congress looks to increase the use of carbon-smart renewable energy, it is critical that priority be placed on technologies that also improve U.S. energy security.

Solar energy, in all of its forms, is a technology that can greatly improve the U.S.’s

ability to have a secure and reliable energy supply.

The electricity infrastructure in the U.S. is aging and energy consumers are increasingly subject to outages that affect critical infrastructure and disrupt business.

The blackout of August 2003 in the Northeast, triggered by a tree limb landing on

power lines, cost consumers and businesses tens of billions of dollars. Unfortunately,

this event is not unique and will occur with greater frequency if Congress does not

take steps to diversify our energy portfolio.

The good news is that this event could easily have been avoided through greater

use of solar energy. A 2004 Department of Energy (DOE) study entitled Solution

to the Summer Blackouts? concludes that if solar energy had met just one percent

of local peak demand, we would have avoided the August 2003 blackout and other

local brown-outs. DOE’s explanation was simple: high air conditioning loads stressed

the grid and created the circumstances for the blackout. This extreme load occurred

on one of the hottest and sunniest days during the summer—the exact time when

output from solar systems is greatest. DOE also concluded that over reliance on central generating stations led to grid fatigue and failure. This infrastructure vulnerability could have been minimized through greater reliance on distributed solar energy.

Photovoltaic (PV) and solar water heating systems are distributed generation

(DG) technologies. Like other DG technologies, they provide energy at the point of

consumption rather than at a central power plant hundreds of miles away. As such,

DG does not rely on vulnerable regional transmission lines and local distribution

networks. By producing energy at the source of consumption, solar power alleviates

stress and vulnerability on the grid.

The DOE study also concluded that investing in solar energy is a more economically efficient and cost effective way to improve our energy infrastructure than capital intensive and often community-opposed transmission line upgrades and brandnew transmission lines. In sum, using solar energy is a cost-effective, affordable way

to alleviate stress on the electricity grid and improve the overall reliability of our

electricity infrastructure.

Solar is also the most reliable source of energy. This reliable track record has resulted in wide deployment of the technology in applications where power interruptions are unacceptable, including: oil and gas industry use of solar energy to power

pumps and meters at remote locations; telecommunications industry use of solar to

power relay stations and remote equipment; and, every satellite that has been sent

out into space in the last 30 years has been powered by solar energy.

Ironically, energy industry acceptance of the technology stands in stark contrast

to consumer behavior. Consumers are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in

small gasoline-powered generators. During grid failure and electricity outages, electronic gasoline pumps at the gas stations do not operate, rendering many generators

idle because of fuel shortage. Solar energy is a technology that can provide reliable

power during power outages.

Finally, solar stabilizes volatile energy prices, a critical energy security issue affecting the U.S. today. In the last five years, consumers have seen electricity prices

escalate between 20 and 78 percent. At the same time, we have seen the price of

natural gas triple and the price of gasoline routinely exceed $3.00 per gallon. Each

19

1 Energy Information Administration, Net Generation by Energy Source by Type of Producer,

October 2006.

year the cost of energy is taking a larger percentage of a family’s income than at

any other time in U.S. history. This energy inflation vulnerability especially impacts

the poor and elderly on fixed incomes.

Solar can help address this vulnerability because it requires no fuel to operate.

Although a solar system is more expensive up front, there are no additional costs

for operating a system once installed. Furthermore, solar panels are guaranteed for

20–25 years, allowing consumers to ‘‘lock in’’ their electricity prices for decades. Recognizing the upward trend in energy costs, incentivizing the use of a technology that

requires no fuel inputs is an important element of any energy security plan.

Energy Independence

Solar energy is a domestic and abundant energy source in the U.S. The U.S. has

the best solar resources of any developed country in the world. Proportionally, U.S.

solar energy resources exceed those of fossil, nuclear or other renewable energy resources. Despite this tremendous advantage, the U.S. has failed to capture and harness this free and readily available energy. In 2006, solar energy produced just 1/

30th of one percent of all electricity in the U.S.; Germany in contrast, with the solar

resources of Alaska, installed seven times more solar energy property than the entire U.S.1

The U.S. is over-dependent on foreign sources of energy. Demand for natural gas

continues to rise, primarily for electricity generation. Increasingly we are turning

to countries like Algeria to provide us with liquefied natural gas (LNG) to meet our

growing demand. According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 41 new

LNG terminals are proposed for construction in U.S. harbors and off U.S. beaches.

Constructing these plants will exacerbate our addiction to foreign sources of energy.

Our desire for energy independence demands a different course.

Solar energy directly displaces natural gas used for heating homes and water. In

a home, solar can directly replace natural gas used to heat radiant systems and can

displace up to 70 percent of the natural gas used to generate hot water. Many countries that do not have a domestic source of fossil fuels, including Spain and Israel,

mandate that all new homes must have solar water heating systems installed. The

U.S. can demonstrate similar energy independence by using market incentives that

spur solar investment and market growth.

Solar energy also displaces natural gas used to generate electricity. Almost all intermediate and peaking electricity plants use natural gas as the source of energy.

These plants are often very inefficient and produce expensive electricity. Solar energy, which generates electricity from 8 A.M.–7 P.M. daily, can displace these inefficient, high cost power plants, and become a reliable source of firm, dispatchable

power. Given the high price of natural gas to key industrial sectors and consumers,

the U.S. can no longer afford to neglect its abundant solar resources.

In addition to tempering natural gas demand growth, solar can also generate electricity to be used by plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, thereby displacing gasoline derived from foreign oil supplies. Imagine a gasoline-free electric vehicle that

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2 NREL report, ‘‘Distributed Energy Resources for the California Local Government Commission,’’ October 2000. 3Sandia National Laboratories, Energy-Water Nexus, http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/

news-releases/2006/environ-waste-mgmt/mapwest.html 4 NREL Report No. NREL/FS–520–24619: ‘‘Energy Payback: Clean Energy from PV’’

also uses electricity derived from the sun rather than a coal-fired plant. The technology is advancing rapidly in this direction.

Environmental Benefits

Though the environmental benefits of solar energy might be considered a given,

it is worth highlighting several points. Solar is the cleanest method of energy generation, in terms of avoided air, waste and noise pollution, energy payback, water

conservation, avoided radiation and harm to wildlife, or environmental risk in the

event of an accident.

Solar energy produces no greenhouse gases, no acid precipitation or toxic emissions, and no other air pollution of any kind. Over the 40–50 year life of a solar

electric system, every kilowatt (kW) of solar electric power reduces 217,000 pounds

of carbon dioxide, 1500 pounds of sulfur dioxide, and 830 pounds of nitrogen oxides

emissions as compared to electricity produced by conventional generation.2

Photovoltaic solar energy generates electricity without use any water. In contrast,

fossil fuel and nuclear based electricity generation use substantial amounts of water

to run steam turbines. Across the western United States, approximately 40 percent

of fresh water withdrawals are used for electric generation.3 If water-starved communities like Phoenix and Las Vegas are to continue growing, we must place greater emphasis on water-free electricity generating technologies.

Concerns have been raised whether the energy used to produce solar panels is

surpassed by the amount of energy generated from the panels. This energy relationship is referred to as the ‘‘energy payback period.’’ Currently, the energy payback

for PV panels varies from 1–4 years depending on different manufacturing variables. This means that a PV panel with a life expectancy of 40–50 years will generate between 10 and 50 times more energy than was required to create the panel.

Despite this superior ‘‘energy return on investment,’’ the manufacturing process is

still growing more efficient every year as the scale of production increases.4

Strong Public Support Exists for Greater Solar Development

Polls consistently reflect that the American public strongly supports the accelerated use of solar technologies. For example, a 2005 poll by the Yale Center of Environmental Law and Policy 2005 found that 90 percent of Americans support building more solar power facilities to help reduce U.S. dependence on energy imports.

A Roper Public Affairs poll conducted in May 2007 found that nearly 90 percent of

Americans believe home builders should offer solar power as an option for all new

homes constructed. And 73 percent of those surveyed in another Roper survey in

2006 said that solar energy technology is more important today than ever in responding to America’s energy challenges.

21

In general, Americans would like to see the Federal Government take a more active role in promoting solar development. A February 2006 poll by the Pew Research

Center found that 82 percent of respondents favored increasing federal funding for

research on wind, solar and hydrogen technology. A March 2006 ABC News/Time/

Stanford University poll found that 87 percent favored tax breaks for companies to

produce more electricity from water, wind and solar. Note that these policies would

require the use of taxpayer funds, unlike a check-off program.

Finally, polling surveys demonstrate that Americans are willing to pay more for

solar technologies under certain conditions. An April 2007 study by the New York

Times and CBS News found that 75 percent of Americans were willing to pay more

for solar electricity if it helped reduce global warming. Meanwhile, one-half of respondents in the May 2007 Roper survey said they would spend up to 10 percent

more for a solar-equipped house when told that solar homes have a proven higher

resale value. A majority of respondents cited the financial and energy savings of a

solar system as the main benefit of buying a solar system, indicating that consumers are assessing solar for its potential savings benefits and would support a

program that drives down the cost of solar.

Need for Improved Consumer Education About Solar

However, while 87 percent of respondents to the New York Times/CBS News poll

supported the use of solar to generate electricity, just three percent of respondents

said that they used solar to generate heat, hot water, or electricity. That is actually

a far higher solar use percentage than amongst the American public at large, but

it nevertheless illustrates the gap between broad public support for solar and its de

minimis use today.

Though growing exponentially and constantly innovating, the U.S. solar industry

is still in a nascent period. As mentioned above, solar PV provides less than 1/30th

of one percent of the current U.S. electricity supply. Furthermore, PV is primarily

a distributed generation technology that is installed on the rooftops of homes and

businesses throughout the U.S.—a paradigm shift from the traditional model of centralized electricity generation. Most solar installation companies are small businesses, typically employing no more than a few dozen people, and lacking the budget to reach a broad swathe of consumers.

Thus, even as consumers embrace the idea of solar power, they are usually not

fully aware of its capabilities and they have misconceptions about how a solar energy system works in a home. Market reports demonstrate a lack of consumer understanding that solar electricity operates just like regular electricity and is the

same kind of electricity that a local utility company provides. 29 percent of respondents to the May 2007 Roper survey were not aware that solar energy can power

common electric devices like computers or appliances. A number of common myths

persist about modern solar technology, such as the belief that solar will not work

in places outside of the Sunbelt or that solar devices require more energy to manufacture than they produce in their lifetime, and these myths often inhibit consumer

consideration of solar as a viable energy source.

Furthermore, consumers lack information on how to find solar companies or what

solar products might be available. On a daily basis, the most common phone calls

to SEIA come from consumers who ask, ‘‘Where can I find solar for my home?’’ The

industry has taken a number of steps to centralize this type of information, including the development of a national solar installer directory, Findsolar.com. Individually, several companies have undertaken consumer awareness campaigns that

focus on basic technology education. Yet these efforts clearly do not equate to the

potential reach of a national consumer awareness campaign.

Benefits of a Solar Check-Off Program

A ‘‘Got Solar’’ program, based on a successful model used by other industries,

would address the above concerns by creating an industry-funded national education

campaign on the benefits of solar energy. Collectively, the industry would pool its

resources through an industry-wide program to fund this educational effort.

SEIA anticipates major benefits both to the consumer and to the industry with

the creation of a check-off program. Consumers would increasingly have the information they need to ‘‘go solar.’’ As the availability of market information increases,

consumers would be better able to conduct due diligence on product and firm quality

before purchasing a system. Educated consumers could convince their businesses,

local utilities, and public representatives to adopt solar energy and promote its use.

And the program would also help to drive down the costs of solar to the consumer

over time, creating a market demand signal that would help companies to rapidly

increase production for the U.S. market and achieve economies of scale.

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5 Examples of statutes establishing check-off programs include: National Oilheat Research Alliance Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 6201; Commodity Promotion, Research, and Information Act, 7 U.S.C.

§§ 7401; 7411–7425; Cotton Research and Promotion Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2102–2118; Potato Research

and Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2611–2627; Egg Research and Consumer Information

Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2701–2718; Beef Research and Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2901–2911; Wheat

and Wheat Foods Research and Nutrition Education Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 3401–3417; Floral Research

and Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 4301–4319; Dairy Production Stabilization Act, 7

U.S.C. §§ 4501–4538; Honey Research, Promotion, and Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C.

§§ 4601–4613; Pork Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 4801–4819;

Watermelon Research and Promotion Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 4901–4916; Pecan Promotion and Research

Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 6001–6013; Mushroom Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act, 7

U.S.C. §§ 6101–6112; Lime Research, Promotion, and Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C.

§§ 6201–6212; Soybean Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 6301– 6311; Fluid Milk Promotion Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 6401–6417; Fresh Cut Flowers and Fresh Cut

Greens Promotion and Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 6801–6814; Sheep Promotion, Research, and

Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 7101–7111; Canola and Rapeseed Research, Promotion, and Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 7441–7452; National Kiwifruit Research, Promotion, and

Consumer Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 7461–7473; Popcorn Promotion, Research, and Consumer

Information Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 7481–7491; Hass Avocado Promotion, Research, and Information

Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 7801–7813. 6Dr. Ronald W. Ward, ‘‘Beef Demand and the Rate-of-Return to the U.S. Beef Checkoff,’’ September 2004, http://www.beefboard.org/uDocs/wardstudy-2004.pdf; Agricultural Marketing

Service of the Department of Agriculture, http://www.ams.usda.gov/lsg/mpb/beef/beefchk.htm 7 Armbruster, Walter J., and John P. Nichols. Commodity Promotion Policy. 1995 Farm Bill

The solar industry would also reap the benefits of increased consumer education

and focused demand, which would translate into industry growth. A vibrant and

well-functioning market system would greatly help to make the domestic industry

competitive in the global marketplace for solar energy technologies. The benefits of

increased awareness of solar would accrue to a wide group of small-to mid-sized industry players (installers, local integrators, equipment suppliers), many of whom

would not be able to afford this type of broad public outreach and education.

Successful Precedents for a Solar Check-Off Program

The ‘‘Got Solar’’ program is based on a very successful model used in other industries to increase consumer awareness of their product. Check-off programs have

helped fund the dairy industry’s ‘‘Got Milk’’ campaign, the American Egg Board’s ‘‘Incredible Edible Egg,’’ the America’s Cotton Producers and Importers’ ‘‘Cotton, the

Fabric of Our Lives,’’ and the National Pork Board’s ‘‘Pork, the Other White Meat.’’ In each case, a piece of legislation similar to the ‘‘Got Solar’’ program created a

board that collects a small assessment from each of the industry’s members.5 The

funds are then directed toward education and public awareness campaigns.

Two examples of well-functioning check-off programs can be found in the oil heating and beef industries. The oil heating industry pushed for passage of the National

Oilheat Research Alliance (NORA) Act of 2000, which assesses a charge of $.002 per

gallon produced on members of the oil heating industry. The program has allowed

an otherwise fragmented industry to pool its resources for advertising and also for

crucial research and development. NORA uses the funds to help development new

oil heating technologies, bringing better products with higher efficiencies to the public.

In another well-known example, the Beef Promotion and Research Act of 1985 charges cattle producers and importers $1 per head of cattle, with the assessments

overseen by the Beef Board and going to fund the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The program brings in millions of dollars per year to fund public education

and advertising campaigns, including the popular ‘‘Beef, It’s What’s for Dinner’’ campaign. This check-off program has been the backbone of the modern beef industry in the United States.

The beef industry’s check-off program has undergone close economic analysis since

it was established. The most recent report, by Dr. Ron Ward of the University of

Florida, studying the check-off program from 2000–2004, showed the program to be

an exceptionally good method of growing an industry’s market. The study found that

for every dollar invested in the check-off program, there was an industry return of

$5.6

Need for Legislative Authority

For a solar check-off program to be effective, it must be established through the

legislative process. Historically, industries have organized voluntary check-offs, but

they account for only a small share of all funding for generic efforts. Hundreds of

mandatory farm commodity promotion programs have been legislated by states or

the Federal Government. Nine out of ten U.S. farmers were contributing to one or

more of these efforts by the mid-1990s.7

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The adoption of a check-off program would ensure that all companies, both domestic and foreign, participate in a campaign to educate consumers on solar energy

technologies. Authority to collect assessments is facilitated by the government for

the practicalities of dealing in interstate commerce and the realities of enforcement

to eliminate the problem of ‘‘free riders,’’ or nonpaying companies that might otherwise benefit economically from programs that others have funded.

The establishment of legislative authority would help ensure that a solar checkoff program would succeed. Though it may be viewed as an industry-imposed ‘‘tax,’’

it is a tax that is established by the industry, with the blessing of members of the

industry, and for the benefit of the industry. Thus, the industry would have the

power to periodically evaluate the effectiveness of the program, with a focus on its

economic benefits to industry members.

Comments on the Solar ERA Proposal

SEIA requests a few key modifications to the proposed check-off program in the

Solar ERA Act. First, current language would exclude SEIA from nominating its

member companies to the Board of the new organization, and SEIA would not be

able to have a representative participate on the Board. As the national trade association representing the industry, SEIA would appropriately play a significant role

in a national industry consumer awareness and education campaign. Therefore, we

request that the criteria for eligible groups be modified to provide SEIA with the

opportunity to nominate candidates and directly participate in Board activities.

Second, while we support a scheduled industry referendum on the continuation

of the program, we believe that the current 22-month target date does not provide

enough time for the creation of a new organizational infrastructure and the development, testing, and execution of a national campaign. We request that the target

date be set no earlier than four years from the passage of legislation. Additionally,

we believe that the current 10 percent threshold of companies needed to request future referenda is too low and could potentially derail the program from being effective, and we propose that the threshold be raised to a minimum of 25 percent.

Conclusion

A ‘‘Got Solar’’ program would be a sound investment in our country’s energy future. By providing a mechanism to increase consumer awareness about solar energy

products, we can empower the American consumer to become part of the solution

to the energy challenges we face as a society. A check-off program would see more

of our energy purchasing dollars go towards an economically vibrant domestic manufacturing and installation base, and promote a carbon-smart, domestically produced energy source from the most abundant source on the planet—the sun.

Thank you very much for your consideration of my testimony. I look forward to

answering any questions you may have.

BIOGRAPHY FOR RHONE RESCH

Rhone Resch is the President of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA),

the national trade association of the solar energy industry. In this capacity he is

responsible for managing all aspects of the trade association and ensuring their success in advancing solar energy in the U.S.

SEIA represents all solar technologies and serves as the voice of solar energy in

the United States and is responsible for all market analysis and lobbying on behalf

of the solar industry with Congress and the Administration. SEIA’s recent successes

include the creation of the residential and commercial tax credits in the 2005 Energy Policy Act and an expansion of the Department of Energy’s solar program budget from $84 million to $175 million. SEIA also orchestrates public campaigns working with the media to help shape public support for solar energy.

Mr. Resch has over 15 years of experience in clean energy and energy efficiency,

both in the private sector and the Federal Government. Prior to coming to SEIA,

he was Senior Vice President of the Natural Gas Supply Association, a trade association that represents both major and independent companies that produce and

market natural gas.

In addition he has served as Program Manager at the EPA’s Climate Protection

Division in the Office of Air and Radiation, where he developed and implemented

energy efficiency programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous air

pollutants from the petroleum industry.

He also sits on the boards of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, the

Global PV Solar Energy Council, and is Chairman of the Western Governors Association Solar Energy Task Force.

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He holds an MPA in Management from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, a

Master of Environmental Engineering from SUNY Syracuse, and a B.A. from the

University of Michigan. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Lisa and two

children and has a six kW photovoltaic system on his home.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you.

Ms. Weissman, please.

STATEMENT OF MS. JANE M. WEISSMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERSTATE RENEWABLE ENERGY COUNCIL; VICE

CHAIR, NORTH AMERICAN BOARD OF CERTIFIED ENERGY

PRACTITIONERS

Ms. WEISSMAN. Madam Chairman, Chairman Lampson, Members of the Committee and staff, I am very encouraged to be here

this morning and I really thank you for the opportunity.

This is a perfect time to be talking about training and building

a confident and strong workforce for solar energy. Solar electric installations grew by over 40 percent in 2006. If we meet the goals

of the photovoltaic industry roadmap, direct employment will increase from 20,000 now to 62,000 in 2015. By the U.S. Department

of Energy’s own estimates, as many as 5,000 trained installers may

be needed to accomplish their new Solar America Initiative. Many

recent and well-documented reports and research show continued

and robust investment and growth for the solar energy market, but

as the market grows, so does the need for quality and accessible

training opportunities for these new green collar jobs.

The good news is that the framework is in place to give us the

tools we need to develop a strong workforce. NABCEP, the North

American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners, offers professional credentials for renewable energy installers. Since 2003,

NABCEP has certified 365 solar electric installers from 40 states.

NABCEP certifications are based on strict psychometric guidelines

and credentialing principles. The process is rigorous for the applicant and requires documenting experience and passing a four-hour

exam. NABCEP’s competency standard sends a clear message to

consumers and public officials that the industry stresses safe and

ethical business practices and high-quality workmanship standards. The bar has been raised for professional services in the solar

industry.

While NABCEP certifies the installer, IREC, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, accredits the training programs and certifies the instructors. Credentials are awarded using standards developed by the Institute for Sustainable Power. These standards

ensure legitimacy of what is being taught and by whom. A system

of review and audit provides a means to compare content, quality

and resources across a broad range of training.

We see promising trends for new practitioner programs. Community colleges, as my colleague, Joe Sarubbi, will talk about, and

technical schools are offering renewable energy courses. These

range from stand-alone courses, new energy certificates and associate degree programs. Classes are expanding from three- to fiveday workshops to semester-long courses.

The Committee asked me three questions. Question number 1: Is

there a sufficient number of people trained? As market performance continues to grow, the number of current training opportuniVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
25

ties falls far short of meeting the demand for qualified workers. We

need more classroom and hands-on training tailored to meet local

labor needs. Alliances need to be developed and advisory committees established between training centers and local business. The

curriculum needs to include real-world preparation with field and

on-the-roof internships.

Question 2: Are such programs necessary or useful? The current

training programs are a start at providing a critical service that

supports a strong and growing solar industry. However, their reach

is limited and training opportunities need to be broadened. We

must make sure that training programs are teaching students the

right skills to do a good job, that the facilities include the right

equipment and hardware, that safe practices are utilized and that

teachers are qualified. While many states support workshops and

training programs, New York provides a national model for us. Installer training is a top priority for NYSERDA, the New York State

Energy Research and Development Authority. To date, NYSERDA

has invested nearly $1 million to develop seven accredited solar

training centers across the state. NYSERDA’s program is one to

emulate and replicate as it serves as a proven model for future

training programs.

Question 3: How can the quality of training programs be ensured? Training needs to be based on industry standards so that

students are taught the right skills with the right equipment. We

recommend the following. Training should lead to defined workplace knowledge, skills and abilities. Training should address

issues of safety, codes and core competencies of an industry-approved task or job analysis. Training should be in an environment

with appropriate facilities, tools and safe practices. Training should

offer a formal and planned learning structure where the learner receives some sort of feedback and their progress is monitored and

training programs and learning objectives should be assessed and

receive independent approval or accreditation.

We have the foundation in place for training and developing a

strong workforce. NABCEP’s third-party certification programs are

a means for consumers to identify qualified workers. NABCEP has

set industry standards high. Now we need to provide the training

to meet these standards.

Madam Chair, I thank you for this opportunity. Members of the

Committee, thank you, and I would be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Weissman follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JANE M. WEISSMAN

Mr. Chairman, Representative Giffords, and Members of the Committee, thank

you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss education and training

programs to facilitate the adoption of solar energy technology.

I am the Executive Director of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a non

profit organization working with state agencies, communities and industry across

the country. Along with technical assistance, targeted outreach, promoting uniform

guidelines and standards, and consumer protection, we focus on some of the current

and often difficult issues facing expanded renewable energy use such as connecting

small-scale renewables to the utility grid and developing quality assessment programs for renewable energy professionals, products and training programs. The

Interstate Renewable Energy Council offers third-party verification of training programs and instructors using an application and audit assessment process based on

standards developed by the Institute for Sustainable Power which is used interVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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1Our Solar Power Future. PV Energy Road Map. www.seia.org 2DOE Solar America Initiative (SAI) Funding Opportunity Announcement, October 11, 2006.

The goal of the SAI is to reduce the cost of solar photovoltaic technologies so that they become

cost-competitive by 2015. 3March 7, 2007. RenewableEnergyAccess.com 4 Clean Energy Trends 2007. Authors: Joel Makower, Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, Clean

Edge. 5Trends in Practitioner Training for the Renewable Energy Trades. Weissman, J.M. and

Laflin, K. Proceedings American Solar Energy Society Conference, July 2006, Denver, CO.

nationally. This framework of standards and metrics verify that training programs

and instructors have met predetermined and consistent criteria. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

I also serve as the Vice Chair of the North American Board of Certified Energy

Practitioners, NABCEP, a national, non profit corporation offering professional credentials for renewable energy installers. NABCEP was started in 2002 with the first

certification program for solar electric installers launched in 2003. To date, there

are 365 certified solar electric installers from 40 states. Both the photovoltaic and

solar thermal programs are based on strict, psychometric principles and

credentialing guidelines. It is a rigorous process requiring documentation of experience and/or training and the passing of a four-hour exam. NABCEP’s competency

standards for certification sends a clear message to consumers and public officials

that the Industry stresses high quality, safe and ethical business practices and

workmanship standards. The bar has been raised for professional services for the

solar industry.

This is a perfect time to be talking about training and building a competent and

strong workforce.

The solar industry reports that solar electric installations grew by over 20 percent

in 2006. If the goals of the Photovoltaic Industry Road Map are met, total installed

capacity could increase to 9,600 MW by 2015. Direct employment would increase

from 20,000 now to 62,000 by 2015.1

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that as many as 5,000 trained installers may be needed by 2015 to accomplish their new Solar America Initiative.2

A survey conducted by the investment bank Jefferies & Company in February

2007 said that among renewable energy sources, solar power is viewed as likely to

contribute most to the world’s primary energy supplies by 2020.3

According to a report released in March 2007 by Clean Edge, global clean-energy

markets are ready to quadruple in the next decade, growing from $55.4 billion in

revenues in 2006 to more than $226.5 billion by 2016 for four technologies—biofuels,

wind power, solar photovoltaics and the fuel cell and distributed hydrogen market.4

Add to these facts and market-based predictions rising retail electric grid prices,

volatile pump prices, climate change, the increasing value of energy independence,

and new and expanded state and federal policies. All of these influences are resulting in new ‘‘green-collar’’ jobs.

Training Trends

Over the years, the renewable energy industry has been fortunate to have a number of training centers—the Florida Solar Energy Center, Solar Energy International, the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, the North Carolina Solar Center and the Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association. These dedicated programs

have provided us with experienced instructors and well-trained students. But as the

market grows, so does the need for quality and accessible training opportunities.

We are starting to see encouraging trends.5

• More and more Community Colleges and Technical Schools (high schools and

private) are offering Renewable Energy Courses. These range from standalone courses, new energy certificates, associate degree programs, and customized training for business and industry.

• Classes are expanding from three- to five-day workshops to semester-long

courses.

• Students range anywhere from 18–45 years of age. They may be existing college students in energy programs, other technology disciplines, existing trades

people, those looking at changing careers or those who are currently working

in the industry and are upgrading their skills and knowledge.

• Some Community Colleges are incorporating renewable and alternative energy technology into existing trade programs such as construction, electrical,

Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning, and industrial maintenance trades

programs.

27

6Workforce Education for Renewable Energy: Lessons Learned from a National Gathering of

Educators. Weissman, J.M., Ferranti, A. and Laflin, K. Proceedings American Solar Energy Society Conference, July 2007, Cleveland, OH.

In Eugene, Oregon, Lane Community College Energy Management Program offers

a degree and certificate program with a concentration for Renewable Energy Technicians.6

Cape Cod Community College Construction Technology program was recently relocated under the umbrella of the Environmental/Renewable Energy Program. All of

the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency courses will be electives for the Construction Tech program.

The curriculum at two technical high schools on Cape Cod in Massachusetts has

been developed so that renewable energy is integrated into existing shops and academic areas with articulations at Cape Cod Community College.

In January 2006, Austin Community College and the Texas State Energy Conservation Office advertised the offering of a 48-hour, 14-week course in solar electricity. The class at Austin Community College sold out two weeks ahead of the official start date prompting Austin Community College to offer a second section for

the 2006 winter semester.

In November 2005, Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York opened

its photovoltaic laboratory providing students hands-on experience installing photovoltaic systems. The courses are included in the college’s Electrical Construction and

Maintenance program curriculum.

Madison Area Technical College’s Consortium for Education in Renewable Energy

Technology is a partnership among multiple institutions to share instructional resources and expertise. The curriculum is designed to supplement traditional degree

and apprenticeship programs and serve the needs of workers and employers.

The Renewable Energy Diploma Series at North Carolina State University is

structured so that intensive technology training covers not only the technical aspects but also the policy and business parts of the industry.

Through internship programs, students are gaining in-field, on-the-roof installation experiences in New York through the state and industry mentor/student program. The program is administered by the New York Solar Energy Industry Association and supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development

Authority (NYSERDA).

And the National Joint Apprenticeship & Training Program, the training arm for

the IBEW, offers its members and local unions quality training in photovoltaics. In

fact, they just published a text book on Photovoltaic Systems, which is an important

contribution to training around the country.

Question 1. Is there sufficient number of people trained and if not, is there

a sufficient number of training programs?

If market past performance continues and current projections are realized, these

emerging training opportunities fall far short of expected demand for qualified workers. The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts that direct employment could

increase from 20,000 now to 62,000 by 2015. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 5,000 trained installers could be needed to meet their goals. To date, we

have just 365 certified solar electric installers and 40 certified solar thermal installers. While there are more installers who have not become NABCEP-certified, and

while some of them hold licenses providing evidence of competency, there is still a

growing demand for trained and qualified workers.

And, even though we are seeing more Community Colleges and other educational

providers offer training programs and even with distance learning and web-based

instructional opportunities, we need more classroom and hands-on training tailored

to meet local labor needs. We need to see alliances developed and advisory committees established between training centers and local business and industry. Curriculum needs to include real-world preparation for solar installers with field and

laboratory experiences provided.

Question 2. Are such programs necessary or useful for prospective solar

panel installers and consumers?

The programs described above are providing a critical service to support a strong

and growing solar industry. However, their reach is limited and training opportunities need to be broadened.

As part of the Solar America Initiative (SAI), the DOE Solar Energy Technologies

Program is analyzing the current situation to identify needs for the training and

certification of photovoltaic system designers and installers. A task force has been

convened to study and report on these issues.

28

As training programs are offered by a variety of educational providers, how do potential students know that they will be taught the skills and knowledge they will

need to do a good job? Do the facilities include the right equipment and hardware

for training? Are there procedures that ensure safety and safe practices? Are the

programs managed in a fiscally responsible way? Are the teachers qualified? These

are some of the questions that come to mind as more courses are offered and enrollment increases.

While many states support workshops and training programs, New York provides

a national model. Installer training is a top priority for the New York State Energy

Research and Development Authority. NYSERDA is supporting the development of

an in-state network of training programs to provide accessible and quality instructional opportunities for those already in the renewable energy trades or for those

who are planning to enter the profession. To date, NYSERDA has invested nearly

$1,000,000 in developing seven accredited solar training centers and continuing education programs across the state, partnering with SUNY Delhi, SUNY Farmingdale,

the Ulster County Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), Alfred University, Hudson Valley Community College, the City University of New York and

local Joint Apprenticeship & Training Committees/IBEW.

The NYSERDA program is one to emulate and replicate as it serves as a proven

model for future training programs.

Question 3. How can the quality of training programs be ensured?

Training needs to be based on industry standards so that students are taught the

right skills with the right equipment.

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, with input from industry and education subject matter experts, recommends the following guidelines for practitioner

training:

• Training should be designed to provide educational, training, and skill development experiences that lead to defined workplace knowledge, skills, and

abilities.

• Training should appropriately addresses issues of safety, codes, and core competencies of an industry-approved task or job analysis.

• Training should be taught in an atmosphere with appropriate facilities, tools,

safe practices as well as administrative and managerial quality.

• Training should offer a formal and planned learning structure where the

learner receives some sort of feedback and the learner’s progress is monitored.

• Training should be taught under the administration of a legally registered entity.

• Training programs and learning objectives should be assessed and receive

independent approval or accreditation.

Closing Remarks

The foundation is in place for training and developing a strong workforce.

NABCEP’s third-party verification and certification programs result in a means for

consumers to identify qualified installers and encourage the development of a wellqualified workforce. NABCEP has set industry standards high. . .now we need to

provide the training to meet these standards.

Mr. Chairman, Representative Giffords and Members of the Committee, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be happy to take any questions.

BIOGRAPHY FOR JANE M. WEISSMAN

POSITIONS

• Executive Director, Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC).

1994–Present

Responsible for all policy directions, operations, and management for this

non-profit, membership organization. Developed the strategic route that resulted in national recognition of the Council for its education, procurement,

and market-based programs. Collaborate with the U.S. Department of Energy, National Laboratories, state energy offices, other state and municipal

offices, community groups, industry, and national organizations to promote

the procurement and use of renewable energy resources. Developed expertise in quality assessment through the development of certification and accreditation programs.

29

• National Director, Photovoltaics for You Program. 1991–1994

Directed this national commercialization initiative. Worked with utilities,

regulators, government, consumer advocacy groups, and the photovoltaic industry.

• Executive Director of the Massachusetts Photovoltaic Center of Excellence. Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 1985–1991.

Directed this multi-million dollar solar electric high-tech, public/private initiative. Responsible for all policy, marketing, operations, and program development.

EDUCATION

• Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Program for

Senior Executives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1989.

• Suffolk University, Business and Public Administration Graduate Courses,

1974.

• B.A. Hood College, Frederick, Maryland. 1970.

• ANSI Standards Training Course: Requirements of the ISO/IEC 17024

• ANSI Standards Training Course: Standards Development Process

PUBLICATIONS

• Jane M. Weissman (IREC), Kirk Laflin (PETE). Trends in Practitioner Training for the Renewable Energy Trades. Proceedings at the ASES Solar 2006

Conference. July 2006.

• Jane M. Weissman (IREC). Defining the Workforce Development Framework

& Labor Market Needs for the Renewable Energy Industries. Proceedings at

the ASES Solar 2004 Conference. July 2004.

• Ward Bower (SNL), Jane Weissman (IREC), Wendy Parker (ISP). Certification Programs for the Photovoltaic Industry—Status and Plans. February

2003.

• Barbara Martin (FSEC), Jane M. Weissman (IREC), Mark Fitzgerald (ISP).

A National Program for Certifying Solar Electric Practitioners. Proceedings at

the 8th International Symposium on Renewable Energy Education. August

2002.

• Wendy Parker (ISP), Ward Bower (SNL), Jane Weissman (IREC). Costs and

Benefits of Practitioner Certification or Licensure for the Solar Industry. Proceedings of the IEEE 29th PV Specialist Conference, New Orleans, LA, May,

2002.

AFFILIATIONS

• Board Member & Vice Chair, North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners. 2001–Present

• Board Member, Solar Rating and Certification Corporation. 2005–Present.

• Elected as a Fellow of the American Solar Energy Society. 2004.

• Board Member & Secretary, Institute for Sustainable Power. 2004–Present.

• Member, Solar Today Magazine Advisory Council. Present.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you.

Mr. Sarubbi, please.

STATEMENT OF MR. JOSEPH T. SARUBBI, PROFESSOR/DEPARTMENT CHAIR, BUILDING SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT, HUDSON VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Mr. SARUBBI. Thank you. Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, it is certainly an honor and a pleasure for me to appear before you today to discuss the value of training programs for the installation and maintenance of photovoltaic systems. I truly believe

the timing is right for our country to invest in renewable energy

technologies. We are witnessing a renaissance in thinking about

30

the way we generate and use energy in America and solar power

is a key component of this new mindset.

As we continue to embrace solar power, we need a well-training

workforce to be responsive to this fast-growing industry to ensure

success and our country has the educational infrastructure at the

post-secondary level capable of creating a skilled workforce in photovoltaic installation and maintenance.

At the forefront of this training are community colleges. With the

right resources, I have witnessed firsthand the ability of community colleges to quickly take action and develop credit and noncredit courses, certificate programs as well as associate’s degrees to

develop a skilled workforce in myriad occupations. Hudson Valley

Community College can certainly be viewed as a case study for developing a successful solar energy training program. We have

gained national and international recognition for our PV installers

programs and our training facilities. Our success was based on

three variables. First, a government agency such as the New York

State Research and Development Authority, who provided the

funding stream through grant opportunities as well as tremendous

guidance to help ensure success along with other organizations

such as the Interstate Renewable Energy Council and the North

American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners, who are guiding

us toward accreditation. The second variable is collaborating with

the local certified PV companies with the expertise to recommend

the best equipment for training, advice on curriculum and on-thejob training for our students, and third, well-trained faculty to deliver high-quality education.

Now, we weren’t sure what was going to happen when we started

this process but to steal the baseball analogy, build it and they will

come, certainly held true for our solar training programs. Once the

word got out, interest came quickly and is growing fast in many

ways. From PV companies expressing interest in hiring our students, from individuals interested in gaining the solar training,

from homeowners seeking information about having solar systems

installed, and from other schools interested in learning from our

success, there has been tremendous synergy surrounding the development of our solar training program, so much so that Hudson Valley Community College hosted the first-ever national conference for

educators and trainers on renewable energy training and energy efficiency workforce education, and that happened last November

with educators and school administrators from other 30 states and

six countries. We had somebody come from Australia who was interested in seeing what we were doing. It was tremendously successful and we are hosting a second conference in March 2008, and

I share that because great things have come out of us starting a

training program in the solar industry. Members of the community

now have another career path. Solar companies are happy because

they can expand their services as more and more homeowners

clamor for solar power, all leading to job growth and economic development. Furthermore, our success has opened the door to develop wonderful partnerships with local solar installation companies as well as large solar manufacturing companies such as Sun

Power, who uses our facilities for training, and they are a CaliVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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fornia-based company and they come to Troy, New York, to utilize

our facilities.

In closing, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of solar—you

know, certified solar training programs in ensuring the continued

growth of the solar industry. It is a critical cog in the wheel of success. Without sound training programs, that wheel might keep rolling for a while but it will break down. I ask the Members of this

Committee to please consider supporting this exciting bill and

thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my thoughts on

this, and I will certainly entertain questions afterwards.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Sarubbi follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOSEPH T. SARUBBI

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, it’s an honor and a pleasure for me

to appear before you today to discuss the value of training programs for the installation and maintenance of photovoltaic systems.

The timing is right for our country to invest in renewable energy technologies and

develop a workforce that will meet the demands of the ever-growing solar energy

industry. We are witnessing a renaissance in thinking about the way we generate

and use energy in America and solar power is a key component of this new mindset.

In fact, there is a real grassroots effort to increase the use of ‘‘green’’ energy technology and its time for a national policy to keep this momentum. Moreover, our

country has the educational infrastructure at the post-secondary level to respond to

the challenges of creating a skilled workforce in photovoltaic (PV) installation. What

we need is a comprehensive national plan for training that will help spur further

development and interest in solar energy.

At the forefront of training a workforce to meet the needs of this emerging industry are community colleges. While most four-year institutions gain notoriety for research and development, it’s community colleges that are, and will continue to be,

responsive to national, state and local initiatives that drive the development of

training programs. With the right resources, I’ve witnessed first-hand the ability of

community colleges to quickly take action and develop credit and non-credit courses,

certificate programs, and new associate’s degrees that act as a catalyst for economic

growth by providing skilled workforces. For example, Hudson Valley Community

College is a comprehensive institution that serves the greater Capital Region of upstate New York. With more than 70 degree and certificate programs and more than

12,000 students, Hudson Valley Community College has positioned itself as a true

partner with businesses and government agencies in the region and across the state.

The college has received national and international recognition for its world-class

technologies programs, and its photovoltaic training program is no exception.

At the forefront of the college’s success with solar energy training, are the partnerships forged with government agencies such as the New York State Research

and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which offers numerous grant opportunities

in renewable energy technology training. In fact, NYSERDA’s funding program for

the development of photovoltaic installers was the catalyst and mechanism that allowed Hudson Valley Community College to invest in PV training. By reaching out

to local PV Companies, Hudson Valley Community College was able to tap into experts in the field who are Certified PV installers as recognized by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP). With their help, as well as

assistance from NYSERDA, Hudson Valley Community College was able to create,

in a rather short period of time, a nationally recognized facility to train PV installers (see exhibits 1–3). The college developed credited PV courses to augment its

Electrical Construction and Maintenance Associate’s Degree program, as well as a

State University of New York (SUNY) approved Photovoltaic Installers Certificate

Program. In addition, through the college’s Workforce Development Institute, numerous non-credit PV installer training programs have been developed and are offered on an on-going basis.

Demand for Solar Energy Training

This collaborative effort between government, education and business has generated significant interest and demand throughout New York State and the entire

northeast. The perfect analogy to this venture: ‘‘build it and they will come’’ could

not be anymore true. The college was cautious in its approach to the number of

skilled PV workers it planned on training, not yet understanding the market demands. Today, it’s safe to say that the college underestimated the public interest

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and PV company needs as the solar industry has witnessed exponential growth in

the number of installations of the past few years. For example, in 2003, NYSERDA

received 80 applications for funding assistance of solar installations. By 2006 that

number grew to 286 applications, and 2007 is on pace to well exceed 400 applications (source: NYSERDA). Other agencies such as Long Island Power Authority observed similar growth. Ever since Hudson Valley Community College began to showcase its photovoltaic program and corresponding facilities, interest has grown at the

same rate. I receive inquiries from individuals seeking to obtain photovoltaic skills

via e-mail and phone on a regular basis. During the past year, five (5) companies

from throughout the region have inquired about the availability of PV students for

employment. One local certified photovoltaic installation company started its business in 2004 and had $80,000 in sales. In 2005 the company increased its sales revenue to $300,000 and by the end of 2006 it reached $1.2 million. This same company

has a sales revenue projection for 2007 that will exceed $2.4 million. Another PV

company stated that they need to hire three (3) installers for every $1 million increase in PV sales procured. Hudson Valley Community College is witnessing this

growth first hand and is positioning itself to meet the increase demand for installers.

Students Finding Jobs in the Solar Industry

As I stated earlier, Hudson Valley Community College was originally unsure of

the potential growth of the photovoltaic industry and decided to move cautiously towards training a workforce that exceeded demand. Our strategy was to supplement

an already popular and successful Electrical Construction and Maintenance associate’s degree program by introducing photovoltaic courses as an additional load to

students’ schedules. The college limited the number of students who could enter the

‘‘PV Program’’ to eight to 12 students a year. The college just completed its second

year of training. Of the eighteen (18) students who completed the PV program four

(4) chose to immediately enter the PV field while the others sought employment

with the myriad opportunities in the electrical industry that each student is afforded upon graduation, such as electricians, electronic technicians, electric line

workers, electrical estimators, assistant project designers, etc. This spring, one particular PV company alone sought to hire four installers and two designers, but they

inquired too late to capture a good portion of our electrical students who had the

PV installation skills, as many already secured employment in other areas. The college is starting its PV Installers Certificate program this fall and is currently accepting applications of students for the one-year program. This certificate program,

coupled with our Workforce Development Institute non-credit PV training programs,

should help reduce the current shortage of trained PV installers.

Involvement of Local Business and the State of New York in Building Curriculum

The success of Hudson Valley Community College’s PV training programs and the

development of its photovoltaic laboratory wouldn’t be possible without the funding

initiatives and guidance provided by NYSERDA, as well as the expertise offered by

local PV companies. Both were instrumental and paramount to the advancement of

a first-class training program. In addition to the excellent laboratory facilities,

which were funded through a NYSERDA grant, our partnership with a local PV

company created the opportunity for students to work out in the field on actual residential installations thereby augmenting their training skills (see exhibits 4 & 5).

Such a relationship has helped ensure that our students enjoy high passage rates

for the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners Photovoltaic Entry

Level Certificate of Knowledge. Furthermore, Hudson Valley Community College is

currently working with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) as it positions itself to become a national accredited training institution as well as offering

accredited training programs. The college expects to be accredited near the end of

the year.

Yet it’s the local and state partnerships that allowed Hudson Valley Community

College to be responsive to the needs of the community. Through NYSERDA’s networking Hudson Valley was able to forge a solid partnership with California-based

SunPower Corporation. SunPower, seeking an East Coast presence for their growing

business, donated equipment for the faculty and students of the College to utilize

in exchange for SunPower’s use of our photovoltaic laboratory at intermittent times

throughout the year (see exhibits 6–8). This relationship gave our students greater

exposure to more types of photovoltaic equipment and practices. SunPower has enjoyed their relationship with the college and is currently seeking additional avenues

of training with Hudson Valley. Moreover, other types of training associated with

photovoltaic installations have emerged that is equally important to the success of

33

solar technologies. Local building inspector training as well as augmented training

on electrical codes will ensure quality installations. When New York State, educational institutions and businesses are all invested in developing beneficial training

programs such as photovoltaic installation, then the link between job growth and

economic development becomes transparent.

Photovoltaic training programs, much like other technology training programs are

expensive by nature. Yet, if done right, the high academic quality of such programs

becomes apparent and is usually successful in fulfilling its mission. Community colleges are the best fit to offer such training programs, but because of the shear nature of funding community colleges need financial assistance to develop first class

training programs. Continued partnering with government agencies and businesses

that have a vested interest in such programs could help build a national program

that will facilitate the adoption of solar technology.

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35

36

37

38

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BIOGRAPHY FOR JOSEPH T. SARUBBI

Joseph T. Sarubbi of East Greenbush, NY, is a Professor and Department Chair

of the Building Systems Technology department at Hudson Valley Community College. He is a seasoned educator with more than 35 years’ experience in education

and the electrical construction and maintenance industry, and has more than 20

years’ experience developing customized training programs for firms such as General Electric, Owens Corning, National Grid, and Georgia Pacific.

Through a strong partnership with the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority, Mr. Sarubbi has emerged as a leader in New York State in

developing credit and non-credit instructional programs in renewable energy technology in the areas of photovoltaic installation and energy efficiency, and is currently establishing training programs for the installation and maintenance of geothermal heat pumps, and wind energy systems. Under his leadership, in 2006, Hudson Valley Community College hosted the first-ever Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Workforce Education: A National Conference for Educators and Trainers. It

was attended by individuals from 30 states and six countries. The college will play

host to the conference again in 2008.

Mr. Sarubbi has a Bachelor’s degree in vocational technical education from State

University of New York Institute of Technology in Utica, NY and a Master’s degree

in education administration and policy studies from University at Albany. He also

earned his journeyman electrician certificate through the International Brotherhood

of Electrical Workers.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Sarubbi.

Dr. Arvizu.

41

STATEMENT OF DR. DANIEL E. ARVIZU, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL

RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF

ENERGY

Dr. ARVIZU. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Members

of the Committee, for this opportunity to discuss important issues

related to the Nation’s energy policies to meet our future energy

needs. I am the director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and NREL, as we call it, is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary laboratory for research and development of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. I am

honored to be here to speak with you today. I might note, as I preface my remarks, that I started in the solar business more than 30

years ago as a young engineer working on solar power towers, concentrating solar power at Sandia National Laboratories, and we

have come a long way in that time.

I applaud the Committee for its continuing examination of solar

and other resources of renewable electricity and fuels. If we are to

ensure the Nation receives the full range of benefits from renewable energy technologies, we need to carefully balance and blend

new technology, market acceptance and government policies. It is

not a question of whether to rely on the market, on the research

or on the government action. As we work together, we need to solve

our energy problems by deploying all of these things simultaneously. DOE’s Solar Energy Research Program supports the development and deployment of solar energy technologies and systems

that can help meet our nation’s electricity needs and reduce stress

on our electricity infrastructure. The solar program supports research at NREL as well as other institutions in photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, solar heating and lighting. Through the

President’s Solar America Initiative, the SAI, the Nation’s goal is

to reduce the cost of solar photovoltaic technologies so they become

cost-competitive and effective with other sources of electricity in all

major U.S. markets by the year 2015. Although the bulk of the

U.S. national program is focused on photovoltaics, I will focus my

remarks today, oral remarks, that is, on concentrating solar power,

CSP, since that is really the topic of the discussion draft. It is primarily addressing where CSP fits into the overall portfolio.

Recent developments in the western U.S. illustrate the growing

concern over greenhouse gas emissions, consequently a market climate is opening up that is furthering the encouragement to deploy

concentrating solar power certainly in the U.S. Southwest. In the

United States, nine CSP power plants totaling 354 megawatts have

been operating reliably in California for the past 16 years and

there seems to be—we seem to be poised for some growth. These

plants are especially interesting because with the addition of thermal storage, they are ideally suited to meet peak demands of energy use in the Southwest. Until recently, however, this CSP technology has been stagnant, and as with all new energy technologies,

cost is the issue. CSP has had additional challenges in that this

technology requires scale to achieve its ultimate cost-effectiveness.

Couple the scale issue with high upfront capital costs and what you

have is a pretty high investment risk that really is difficult in the

traditional marketplace. In 2003, the solar program at the Department of Energy addressed cost by commissioning a detailed techVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
42

nical analysis of what this technology could produce, and it was reviewed subsequently by the National Academies and I participated

on that panel. The cost of CSP at that point was concluded that

even though at that time it was around 12 to 14 cents a kilowatthour, that it could ultimately be down in the six to five cents a kilowatt-hour, and we believe that today even though costs could be

exceeded.

The discussion draft language on thermal energy storage addresses an important issue related to the intermittent nature of

solar energy and its impact on utilities and the potential for lowcost and efficient thermal storage is one of the key long-term attributes of large-scale CSP technologies. The ability of CSP technologies to store energy presents an opportunity for DOE and

NREL to establish an R&D effort that focuses on solar technologies

that can produce baseload power at five cents a kilowatt-hour, and

these systems could include storage of up to 17 hours that would

compete for firm power from coal power plants, especially when

they are outfitted with carbon sequestration technology. So it is expected that an aggressive R&D program could achieve these cost

goals by the year 2020.

The discussion draft also addresses transmission integration, and

an important issue for CSP is that CSP is best when the sun is

most intense and you have cloudless days, as we do in the sunny

Southwest. So plants are often located in desert or semi-arid locations where very few people live. Transmission lines are required

to bring that power from remote locations to the urban load centers. Throughout the West, access to transmission is generally limited because many lines operate at or near capacity. While transmission is a problem, it is particularly difficult for solar because

solar power plants need to be located where the solar resource is

and they do not always have close access to existing transmission

lines. Additional transmission lines would allow solar energies from

the Southwest to provide a very significant fraction of the overall

total electricity needs of the country. So early market penetration

of CSP could be driven by long-term extension of 30 percent investment tax credits for commercial solar technologies, but if the cost

of CSP power is too high when the tax credits expire, the market

will be significantly impacted because there will be a downtown in

that technology. An objective of our program is to see that the Department of Energy’s CSP R&D activities would be to decrease the

cost of the technology in a timely fashion so the market remains

healthy when tax credits might expire.

The Solar America Initiative of the Department has doubled the

effort to accelerate the deployment of photovoltaics in the marketplace and earlier this year 12 technology pathway partnership

projects were selected to receive up to $168 million over the next

three years and the awardees contributing over 50 percent of the

funding. The new portfolio continues our historic investment in

thin films and increases support significantly for concentrating

photovoltaics and silicon technologies.

In summary, to address our near-term needs in solar power, we

need a national strategy that promotes deployment of solar systems

and processes that are ready to serve us today. At the same time,

to address our longer-term needs and achieve a truly significant

43

contribution from solar power technologies, we must make a new

major commitment to the research required to deliver the next and

subsequent generations of concentrating solar power, photovoltaics

and other new technologies. We also need to invest in the infrastructure and in the workforce required to promote sustainable

businesses and job creation. The good news is that the U.S. can

take back the global leadership that it once had in the solar energy

field. What is likely to be one of the most important new industries

of the century is solar energy through investing wisely now and in

the future. The timing is fortuitous because by most accounts, the

next big major market for global renewable energy use is here in

the United States.

I would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Arvizu follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DANIEL E. ARVIZU

Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to discuss important issues related

to the Nation’s energy policies to meet our energy demands for the future. I am the

director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary laboratory for research and development of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. I am honored to

be here, and to speak with you today.

We applaud the Committee for its continuing examination of solar and other

sources of renewable electricity and fuels. If we are to ensure the Nation receives

the full range of benefits that renewable energy technologies can provide, we will

need a carefully balanced blend of new technology, market acceptance and government policies. It is not a question of whether to rely solely on the market, or on

new research, or on government action, as we work to solve our energy problems.

To accelerate deployment of renewable energy technologies, we need to effectively

combine all three.

It’s also crucial that this mix of technology, markets and policies be crafted so

that each works in conjunction with the others. The reality is that distinct renewable energy technologies—be they solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, biomass

power, biofuels or geothermal—are in different places in terms of their economics,

technological maturity and market acceptance. While a broad range of policies are

needed to spur on these varied technologies, the specifics of policies and incentives

to be enacted ideally must be tailored to fit the unique requirements of each of the

systems and devices we are seeking to deploy.

My testimony will address the Committee’s Solar Discussion Draft, share with

you related activities underway in the Solar Energy Program of the Department of

Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and provide some specific reactions to the draft from our laboratory’s perspective. I should note that on

behalf of DOE, the Administration has not had sufficient time to coordinate interagency views on the Discussion Draft, but the Department wants to provide some

preliminary comments.

SOLAR POWER: CURRENT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

AND POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE NATION’S ENERGY

PORTFOLIO

DOE’s Solar Energy Program sponsors research, development, and deployment of

solar energy technologies and systems that can help meet our nation’s electricity

needs and reduce stress on our electricity infrastructure. The Solar Program supports research in photovoltaics (PV), concentrating solar power (CSP), and solar

heating and lighting. Through the President’s Solar America Initiative (SAI), a

major effort within his Advanced Energy Initiative, the Solar Energy Program goal

is to reduce the cost of solar photovoltaic technologies so that they become cost-competitive with other sources of electricity in all major U.S. markets by 2015.

The SAI is being implemented at a critical time in the evolution of the global solar

market. Worldwide growth rates for photovoltaics have averaged well over 35 percent for the last five years, which means the amount of installed solar power doubles every four years or less. However, this rapid growth is from a very small base;

PV still accounts for less than one percent of electricity generation worldwide. Presently, several nations—including China, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, and

Taiwan—are attempting to attain larger shares of the global photovoltaic market by

44

1 ‘‘AB 32 Assembly Bill,’’ California Legislature, Retrieved on September 31, 2006, from http:/

/www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/bill/asm/ab¥0001-0050/ab¥32¥bill¥20060831¥enrolled.html 2Western Regional Climate Action Initiative, Feb. 26, 2007. Retrieved on April 3, 2007 from

http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/documents/2007-02-26¥WesternClimateAgreementFinal.pdf 3 ‘‘SDG&E Signs Solar Power and Other Renewables Energy Pacts,’’ San Diego Gas & Electric

Press Release, September 7, 2005. 4 ‘‘PG&E Announces Significant New Green Power,’’ PG&E Press Release, August 10, 2006.

making significant public investments to spur private industry. At the same time,

technology improvements and State incentives are stimulating domestic demand for

photovoltaic systems in the U.S. The Solar America Initiative will provide the investment needed to expand U.S. advantages in product design and manufacturing,

assuring that American technologies play a leading role in the growing domestic and

global markets for solar electricity.

The SAI provides a unique opportunity to focus our efforts on accelerating cost

reductions and manufacturing scale-up of the domestic photovoltaic industry to capitalize on this opportunity. As we work to increase our energy independence and reduce our impact on environmental resources, solar technologies offer an attractive

carbon-free, pollution-free energy resource. In Fiscal Year 2007, President Bush requested $148 million for SAI—a 78 percent

increase over pre-initiative levels—and the significant Fiscal Year 2007 Congressional appropriation demonstrated that our nation’s leaders are in agreement that

developing cost-competitive solar technologies is an important priority. The SAI

R&D efforts supported by this funding are expected to expand domestic installed PV

generating capacity up to 10 GW by 2015. Beyond enabling increases in manufacturing capacity, these projects will help put U.S. industry on track to reduce the cost

of electricity produced by PV—from current levels of $0.18—$0.23 per kWh to $0.05—$0.10 per kWh by 2015—a price that is competitive in markets nationwide.

STATUS OF CONCENTRATING SOLAR POWER (CSP) MARKETS

Recent developments in the western United States illustrate the growing concern

over greenhouse gas emissions, and consequently, a market climate that is open to

further deployment of concentrating solar power (CSP) in that region of the country.

In September 2006, California enacted the California Global Warming Solutions

Act of 2006, which requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25

percent by 2020.1 In March 2007, California and four other western states (Arizona,

New Mexico, Oregon, Washington) announced the Western Regional Climate Action

Initiative2 in which they agreed to work together to cut their states’ greenhouse gas

emissions. With the large solar resources available in the Southwest, CSP-generated

electricity could play an important role in helping these states meet their emissions

reduction goals. In the longer-term, CSP-generated electricity could help all the

states reduce their greenhouse emissions.

Solar energy is the southwest’s most abundant renewable resource. In fact, California, Arizona, and New Mexico have enough combined solar energy to provide all

the power needed by the entire country. CSP technology is the least expensive solar

technology for providing large quantities of electrical power, and with sufficient storage, it can deliver baseload power. At a time when large quantities of carbon-free

power will be needed; CSP power plants, constructed primarily of concrete, glass,

and steel, can be quickly constructed and brought on line. The yearly CO2 emissions

from a 1,000 MW coal plant are approximately 2,300,000 tons. The yearly CO2 emissions from a 1,000 MW CSP plant would be nearly zero (there may be some need

for grid power during the operation of the plant). With access to adequate transmission, CSP could even provide inexpensive carbon-free electricity beyond the

Southwest to other regions of the U.S.

In the U.S., nine CSP power plants totaling 354 MW have been operating reliably

in California for over 16 years, and CSP seems poised to grow significantly in the

state. Each of the three major California utilities (Southern California Edison, San

Diego Gas and Electric, and Pacific Gas and Electric) have signed power purchase

agreements for a CSP project or have indicated an intent of doing so. In August

2005, Southern California Edison (SCE) signed a power purchase agreement for 500

MW of CSP dish-engine systems on a 4,500 acre site near Victorville, CA, with an

option to expand the project to 850 MW. In September 2005, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) signed a power purchase agreement for a 300 MW dish-engine project

in California’s Imperial Valley, with an option of expanding the project to 900 MW.3

In August 2006, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company initiated plans with Luz II,

LLC, to purchase at least 500 MW of solar energy beginning in the spring of 2010.4

The State of Nevada has put in place tax credits enabling the construction of a

64 MW CSP project near Las Vegas that recently came on line. Nevada Power will

purchase the power from the plant. A one MW CSP system, completed in 2006, is

45

5 Assessment of Parabolic Trough and Power Tower Solar Technology Cost and Performance

Forecasts, Sargent & Lundy Consulting Group, SL–5641, May 2003.

operating in Arizona for Arizona Public Service. In addition, several other utilities,

under the leadership of Arizona Public Service, are investigating the potential of

forming a consortium that would buy power from a 250 MW CSP plant built in Arizona. The southwestern states also have strong renewable portfolio standards (RPS)

which require that a specific portion of a state’s electricity consumption be met by

renewable energy by a certain year. RPS’ are chief among the state policies that

promote renewable energy, and some even specify that a certain amount of power

must come from solar energy.

CONCENTRATING SOLAR POWER TECHNOLOGY STATUS

As with all new energy technologies, cost is an issue. But CSP has an additional

challenge: the technology requires scale to achieve its ultimate cost effectiveness.

Couple the scale issue with high up-front capital costs and the investment risk is

too large for current market conditions.

The Solar Program addressed the cost issue by commissioning a detailed technical

analysis of CSP by an independent engineering firm and then having the analysis

reviewed by the National Research Council. Sargent and Lundy (S&L) was selected

to conduct this analysis on the basis, among other factors, of its independence from

the CSP industry and its recognized performance in conducting due diligence studies for the fossil power industry. S&L estimated that the cost of CSP technology can

be significantly reduced from 12–14 cents/kWh (as of 2003). Sargent & Lundey predicts projects ultimate costs for CSP troughs at 6.2 cents/kWh and power towers at

5.5 cents/kWh. Sandia and NREL (Sunlab) predict costs could be even lower.

Since the S&L report was completed in 2003, the experience gained from trough

plants being built in the U.S. and Spain is enabling industry to lower their cost

through mass production and building larger plants. Since the S&L report was written, the price of steel, concrete, copper, and other commodity materials have risen.

Although the numbers, as of 2007, are low, the figure continues to show the potential for CSP cost reduction.

Because sunshine is most intense during the hot summer months when air conditioners are working the hardest, solar energy is a good match for a utility’s peak

load. With 3–5 hrs. of storage, CSP is also a good match to a utility’s intermediate

load. After gaining market penetration within the intermediate and peak load markets, however, CSP could expand into baseload generation markets through the expanded use of thermal storage, thereby providing a renewable alternative to baseload coal power. CSP technologies convert solar energy into thermal energy which

is then stored in large tanks. This is an efficient way of keeping the energy until

it’s needed, at which time the hot fluid, often a molten salt mixture, is pumped to

a power block where it is converted to electrical power through a turbine.

The Role of Thermal Energy Storage and Transmission Integration

The Discussion Draft language on thermal energy storage addresses an important

issue related to the intermittent nature of solar energy and its impact on utilities.

Adding thermal storage to concentrating solar power (CSP) plants enables solar energy to be provided any time, day or night, that power is needed. Thermal storage

also has the potential for being low cost. An independent study by Sargent & Lundy

concluded that CSP costs could be reduced to between 4.3 and 6.2 cents/kWh by

2020 for technology that utilizes thermal energy storage.5

The potential for low-cost and efficient thermal storage is one of the key long-term

attributes of large-scale CSP technologies. Key advantages of thermal energy storage are:

• High Value Dispatch of Electricity: Without thermal energy storage, solar

power is an intermittent power resource, dependent on when the sunshine.

Thermal energy storage allows the collection of solar energy to be separated

from the generation of electric power, providing the ability to dispatch generation when the value for electricity is highest.

• Firming Delivery for Solar Power: The ability to store energy and dispatch

solar power when it is needed helps make solar power plants a more reliable

or firm power resource for the utility. Firming of delivery is an important aspect of supporting the economics of solar power plants through utility capacity payments.

• Increasing the Annual Capacity Factor: Solar power generating systems without thermal storage achieve capacity factors in the range of 25–30 percent.

46

With the addition of advanced, low-cost thermal energy storage, systems can

be economically sized to allow capacity factors of 75 percent or higher. As a

result, with the addition of thermal energy storage it is possible for solar

power plants to operate at or near baseload conditions.

The ability of CSP technologies to store energy presents an opportunity for DOE

to establish an R&D effort that focuses on a solar technology that can produce baseload power at about five cents/kWh. Such systems would include 13–17 hrs. of thermal storage and would compete with the cost of power from coal plants using carbon

sequestration technology. It is expected that an aggressive R&D program could

achieve the cost goal by 2020.

The Discussion Draft also addresses transmission integration, an important issue

for CSP plants. CSP works best where the sun is most intense and there are few

cloudy days, so plants are often located in desert or semi-arid locations where few

people live. Transmission lines are required to bring the power from these remote

locations to urban load centers. Throughout the West, access to transmission is generally limited because many lines currently operate at or near capacity. While transmission is a problem for all new power generation, it is particularly difficult for

solar because solar power plants need to be located where the solar resource is best

and these are not always near existing transmission lines. Addition transmission

lines could allow solar energy from the Southwest to provide up to 6,800 GW of electricity to the U.S.

POTENTIAL R&D AND MARKET STRATEGY FOR CSP TECHNOLOGY

During the last three years, representatives of the DOE and NREL solar programs have met with the energy and economic advisors to governors, energy regulators, state legislators, utilities, and other stakeholders in California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. These meetings were to provide the states the economic, environmental, and energy benefits of CSP. Each state expressed an interest in CSP,

although their interest was tempered by the high cost of the technology. They were,

however, encouraged by the Program’s projections of significant cost reduction and

also showed interest in finding ways to encourage the deployment of CSP in their

states. Nevada subsequently implemented tax incentives that have led to the construction of a 64 MW CSP plant outside of Las Vegas.

Utilities have demonstrated a serious interest in CSP for several reasons:

• The widespread availability of solar energy throughout the Southwest provides utilities with flexibility in locating CSP plants near existing or planned

transmission lines.

• Placing CSP plants on the ‘‘right’’ side of congestion can reduce grid congestion and increase grid reliability.

• CSP electricity production aligns closely with periods of peak electricity demand, reducing the need for investment in new generating plants and transmission system upgrades.

• Thermal storage or the hybridization of CSP systems with natural gas avoids

the problems of solar intermittency and allows the plant to dispatch power

to the line when it is needed.

• Large centrally-located power plants are the types of systems that the utilities have operated for years and with which they are most comfortable.

• Once the CSP plant is built, its energy costs are fixed; this stands in contrast

to fossil fueled plants that have experienced large fluctuations in fuel prices

during the last several years.

• The economic studies performed by the states show that a relatively small upfront investment can result in downstream tax revenues for the State and

local governments.

Utility representatives expressed particular interest in CSP because its ability to

store energy enables solar power to be dispatched to the grid through their entire

period of peak demand, or whenever else it is needed. CSP was also attractive to

them because of its size (50–250MW), use of conventional steam turbine power

blocks, and the ability to hybridize CSP plants with natural gas.

Utilities have indicated that even with storage and the other advantages mentioned above, it is hard for them to justify purchasing CSP power above 10 cents/

kWh when they can buy less expensive wind power. In California, utilities can pass

along the higher cost of renewable energy to their rate payers as long as it’s under

about 10 cent/kWh. Reaching 10 cent/kWh is thus important for early market penetration. The federal investment tax credit is important because it does much to

bridge the cost gap. It is also important for the cost of CSP power to be at 5–7 cents/

47

kWh by 2015. So early market penetration of CSP could be driven by a long-term

extension of the 30 percent investment tax credit for commercial solar technologies.

But if the cost of CSP power is too high when the tax credit expires, the market

will take a significant downturn or become completely stagnant. An objective of the

DOE and NREL CSP R&D activities would be to decrease the cost of the technology

in a timely enough fashion so the market remains healthy when the tax credits expire.

To achieve this objective, we must reduce CSP costs to provide intermediate

power at 5–7 cents/kWh with 4–6 hrs. of thermal storage. These activities would

focus on developing the solar collector, receiver, and other components of trough

plants to attain the system goal.

To reach the long-term objective of providing baseload power, we will need to establish feasibility, develop components, evaluate, and test new system concepts beyond the trough plant design. The concepts likely to be examined include power towers, distributed power towers, concentrating line focus receiver (linear Fresnel), and

dishes w/storage. The criteria for developing these technologies will include a detailed analysis that defines the current state of the technology, the needed advancements in efficiency and cost of each component, the development and manufacturing

pathways needed to achieve the goal, the time to achieve the advancements, and

the ability of the industry partner to commercialize the technology.

THE PHOTOVOLTAICS R&D STRATEGY

Prior to January 2006, our research focused on technical progress through increasing the conversion efficiencies of solar cells and reducing the manufacturing

costs of photovoltaic modules. Our national laboratories—NREL and Sandia—implemented this R&D, which included providing relatively stable funding to companies

and universities, resulting in steady, incremental progress. Hundreds of individual

projects were funded at the national laboratories, universities, and companies that

generated continued interest in photovoltaics throughout the country.

But this picture changed after January 2006. We began with a change in program

strategy, along with a fresh look at the solar energy industry by the investment

community, and supportive policies from numerous State and local programs. The

focus of our research shifted from technical progress on components to integrated

PV systems. Under the new strategy, companies funded by SAI are expected to develop products for priority markets, and industry is expected to influence the research agenda for the national laboratories and universities.

Dramatic progress is anticipated from multiple competitive solicitations, coupled

with an aggressive process to evaluate results and eliminate awardees showing less

than substantial progress. The first set of large awards, called Technology Pathway

Partnerships, will support multiple industry-led partnerships over the full valuechain, whereas smaller projects will target earlier-stage technologies. Public attention will be attracted to these high-visibility projects, with the intent of stimulating

consumer interest and eliminating barriers to PV deployment.

Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of this new strategy was DOE’s significant

investment in a new funding opportunity for industry-led Technology Pathway Partnerships. Entrance criteria for commercial applicants included prototype components, pilot production demonstration, and an established business case. At the end

of three year projects, awardees were expected to have commercial PV systems and

subsystems with annual production of greater than 25 MW. These partnerships include collaboration with national laboratories, universities, and suppliers to focus on

the development, testing, demonstration, validation, and interconnection of PV components, systems and manufacturing equipment. Through these efforts, the Partnerships are expected to reduce the installed cost to consumers to $0.05–$0.10 per kWh

by 2015—a price low enough to open up all major U.S. electricity markets.

Earlier this year, 12 Technology Pathway Partnership projects were selected to receive up to $168 million in DOE funding over the next three years, with the awardees contributing over 50 percent of the funding for these projects. Representing a

broad cross-section of U.S. industry, the projects involve more than 50 companies,

14 universities, three non-profits, and two national laboratories in 20 states. The selected projects’ leaders are Amonix, BP Solar, Boeing, Dow Chemical, General Electric, Miasole, Nanosolar, SunPower, United Solar Ovonic, Konarka, GreenRay and

Soliant. This new portfolio continues our historical investment in thin films and increases support significantly for concentrator photovoltaics and crystalline silicon

technologies. The portfolio is intended to deliver on the near-term potential in residential markets and commercial markets, which are targeted by 32 percent and 48

percent of the funding, respectively, with longer-term utility markets following at

20 percent.

48

6DOE’s Office of EERE uses two energy-economy models—NEMS–GPRA07 and MARKAL–

GPRA07—to estimate the impacts of EERE programs on energy markets as part of its annual

benefits analysis. The NEMS–GPRA07 model is a modified version of NEMS, the midterm energy model used by the EIA. The MARKAL–GPRA07 model is a modified version of MARKAL,

a model developed by Brookhaven National Laboratory.

In addition to the Technology Pathway Partnerships, DOE will be releasing a variety of other funding opportunities to round out the PV R&D pipeline. These opportunities will focus on developing new materials and processes for solar electric conversion, transitioning fundamental science studies into the fabrication of new PV devices, shortening the timeline for companies to transition pre-commercial PV module

technologies into full-scale manufacturing, supporting university materials science

and process engineering research and improving inverters and power electronics in

distributed PV systems.

THE NREL PHOTOVOLTAICS R&D PROGRAM

The Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), now NREL, was originally created

to develop the technologies needed to foster a dynamic solar industry. Our Laboratory has succeeded in large part at fulfilling this charter and has been vital to the

development of the PV industry. In recent years, this industry has seen dynamic

change and significant growth—thanks to past R&D successes at NREL.

Importantly, this change has included the emergence of significant internal R&D

at start-up and established companies, as well as a proliferation of PV research at

university laboratories around the country. With the industry and academic elements of the domestic PV R&D community changing significantly, in early 2007 we

began to reexamine our research strategy to ensure that it will be complementary

and relevant in years to come.

During spring of 2007, we began formulating a new multi-year research plan—

with associated personnel and equipment plans—that recognizes this changing market context and is being developed with input from industry and academic collaborators. This planning process is intended to ensure the long-term vitality of NREL’s

research and its mission to help foster and sustain a strong American industry.

The new plan resulting from this process will improve on the existing concept for

managing NREL’s PV R&D portfolio in several critical ways: (1) For a given technology development ‘‘roadmap,’’ the plan will more explicitly link the parameters

targeted for device performance or process development to the market impact they

would make if commercialized (e.g., in terms of change to commercial module costs,

manufacturing equipment capital cost, or manufacturing bills of materials); (2) It

will specifically identify the conditions and parameters under which a given device

technology or process will be sufficiently proven to be transferred via licensing or

other means for commercialization; (3) It will exhibit changing priorities over time,

as research tasks in various areas are planned to be completed and as new technologies emerge for further development; and (4) The plan will explicitly identify research tasks that will be performed in industry, academia, or other institutions that

are relevant to the activities and outcomes of NREL research activities.

We are extremely excited about our progress thus far under the new strategic

planning process. And we look forward to sharing the resulting R&D priorities and

management procedures in October 2007, at the start of our next fiscal year.

PHOTOVOLTAICS PROGRAM OUTCOMES AND BENEFITS

Upon realizing the SAI goal, it is expected that roughly two million metric tons

per year of carbon emissions will be avoided by 2015 and PV will provide approximately five GW of electricity generating capacity—displacing roughly the equivalent

of five coal-fired power plants—enough to energy to power about 1.25 million households. This is equivalent to 10 times the amount of PV installed today.6

Distributed solar technologies will enable our ultimate goal of affordable zero energy homes and buildings which fulfills the President’s Advanced Energy Initiative

vision of changing the way we power our homes and businesses. Net-zero energy

homes and buildings produce as much energy as they consume through improved

efficiency combined with renewable energy, such as solar, providing needed power

and offsetting any utility-provided energy over the course of a year. Optimizing the

balance of energy efficiency improvements and solar PV will result in the most cost

effective net zero energy home or building and connecting the solar PV system to

the grid can allow customers to sell the excess solar energy back to the utility.

Highly efficient buildings with distributed technologies reduce peak demand, and

will ease the need for expensive new generating capacity, transmission and distribution lines as our economy grows. Building-integrated PV can make the buildings sector a source of energy diversity and low carbon electricity (the building sector curVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
49

rently accounts for 39 percent of U.S. energy use). Total energy use in the buildings

sector is projected to increase an additional 30 percent through 2025, and we believe

that solar PV can meet much of this demand.

As the Committee’s Discussion Draft notes, educating energy consumers is critical

to achieving the market goals I have previously indicated. One of the ways we educate Americans about the new choices they have in heating, cooling and powering

their buildings is a unique project that encourages the development of zero energy

homes called the Solar Decathlon. The Decathlon, sponsored by DOE, challenges

schools of architecture and engineering to design solar powered, zero-carbon, selfsustaining houses from the ground up to see which house is the most aesthetically

pleasing and which house performs the best. Twenty collegiate teams from the

United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Germany will participate in this

year’s competition, which will be held on the National Mall from October 12–20,

2007. The public is invited to visit the solar village and tour the houses, which

showcase the latest green building and energy efficient technologies.

BUILDING ON MOMENTUM: STRATEGY & PRIORITIES FOR 2007

During the first 18 months of the Solar America Initiative, DOE and NREL have

worked together to implement a broad-reaching change in strategy with one clear

purpose: to make PV technologies cost-competitive in all major domestic grid-tied

markets by 2015. We emphasize that this change was not implemented simply for

the sake of change. But rather, to take advantage of progress in module efficiency

and fabrication principally achieved by industry, universities, and the national laboratories over the years. These successes form the foundation for the PV systems

that we will be supporting in the future.

Priorities in 2007 include continuing to implement the funding opportunities described above. We will also establish the framework for additional university involvement in the Technology Pathway Partnerships and calibrate our Laboratory’s

research portfolio and future role. And finally, we will ramp-up our efforts in testing

and evaluation of new product designs—an activity that is critical to assuring the

reliability of the new products we are developing with industry.

SUMMARY: BALANCING SHORT- AND LONG-TERM R&D INVESTMENTS

IN SOLAR POWER

To address our near-term needs in solar power we need a national strategy that

promotes the deployment of solar systems and processes that are ready to serve us

today. At the same time, to address our longer-term needs and achieve a significant

contribution from solar power technologies, we must make a major new commitment

to the research required to deliver the next, and subsequent, generations of CSP,

PV and other new technologies.

The good news is that the United States can take back the global leadership it

once had in the solar energy field—what is likely to be one of the most important

new industries of this century—through investing wisely now and into the future.

The timing is fortuitous, because by most accounts the next big market for global

renewable energy in here in the United States.

Thank you.

DISCUSSION

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you so much all of you for your opening remarks. We have a good amount of Members here so I want to get

going pretty quickly. Let us try to limit questions and answers to

five minutes and see how far we get.

SOLAR ENERGY IN GERMANY

I would like to kick off with some of the comments Mr. Resch

made in terms of what we can be doing as a country in comparison

to Germany. What happened in Germany, and for the panel, you

know, what can we learn from them, what are the take-aways,

what are some of the mistakes and the pitfalls?

Mr. RESCH. Thank you, Congresswoman. What Germany did first

and foremost was to make a long-term investment in solar energy

and they did it during the worst economic downtown since World

50

War II. So what they basically said is, we need to diversify our energy portfolio, we are becoming increasingly dependent upon natural gas coming from Russia, and they felt it was very important

to look at what natural resources they did have in place, and that

is certainly solar, although their resources are lower than ours was

one of those resources, and they looked at all renewables including

wind and geothermal and biomass. They created a structure which

is a 20-year incentive structure to encourage the use of renewables.

It is called a feed-in tariff, or the EEG is the acronym in Germany,

and what it does is provide again a fixed incentive over a long period of time. It doesn’t really translate, if you will, to the United

States because our electricity laws are very different but the most

important thing that they did was to give a long-term incentive

structure. Now, what has happened is, manufacturing has expanded rapidly in Germany and they have created almost 40,000

new jobs in Germany in the last five years because of the EEG.

These are manufacturing jobs in eastern Germany, a lot of installation jobs. You are seeing solar go up on barns, on homes, on factories, really all over the country, and they have gone from being

a country that ignored, if you will, solar to being the global leader.

They install eight times as much PV as we do each year. They install about 80,000 solar water heating systems each year. In the

United States, we install about 6,000 solar water heating systems.

And because of that, they have really created an economic force

and growth in Germany that frankly hasn’t been seen since the

high tech, frankly the chip industry is a classic example, the U.S.

technology invented in the United States being commercialized by

the Germans and the Japanese and increasingly the Chinese. So

what they have done is provide a long-term incentive and structure

for encouraging people to use solar.

SOLAR CHECK-OFF PROGRAM

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you. How would the proposed solar research and promotion program or the check-off program enable industry to promote the use of solar power in a way that it currently

cannot, and why is the involvement of the Department of Energy

for this program so useful?

Mr. RESCH. The check-off program really does several things.

First and perhaps most important is, it allows all of the industry

to collectively pool its resources together. So when you look at all

of the individual companies that are out there, they just don’t have

the budgets, if you will, to do a national campaign on their own or

even a branding or marketing campaign but the beautiful thing

about a check-off program, it is a very, very small surcharge that

then collectively and certainly over time creates a pool of money

that then can be used for education and outreach. The second is

really the public perception on solar. When you do the polling and

you ask people what do they think of solar, they want to see more

solar, they want to use more solar. My gosh, you know, you inventory—you ask anybody in this audience behind me, I guarantee

half the people would say—or more would say I want to put solar

on my house at some point in the future. But they need to figure

out how to do that. We need to have a mechanism that allows consumers to learn more about solar, to learn that this is what solar

51

looks like. It is a beautiful thing. It is elegant technology, you

know, that it has incredible environmental benefits, that although

the costs may be high up front in the long run, it does pay for itself

over time and can be a good hedge against let us just say higher

energy prices. So that type of mechanism needs to be pulled together, and what we have found is that programs like ‘‘Got Milk’’ and the pork program and the cattlemen’s programs have worked.

They have worked effectively for agriculture and industries that

again are diverse, that have, you know, literally thousands of small

farmers or that have hundreds of major, you know, agricultural

providers but that collectively when they pool their resources can

get something done. I think the Department of Energy becomes a

critical entity because it allows, let us just say the government

input and coordination on research and public perception and so

what we would want to make sure is anything that we are doing

with this program is operating in a very consistent manner with

the Solar America Initiative and research and development programs that are going on in the DOE, in large part to make sure

that there is no duplication and that the federal resources are used

as effectively as possible but also to get the insight from the researchers around the country into this program.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you.

The Chair now recognizes Ranking Member Hall. Thank you for

being here.

Mr. HALL. Thank you, ma’am. Thank you very much, and thanks

for a good panel here, and Rhone, good to see you again. You are

too young, but—— Mr. RESCH. That is changing quickly, sir.

Mr. HALL.—I think you are going to be a fast learner, and I like

your natural-gas background.

COMPARISON OF SOLAR ENERGY TO ANWR

Mr. Hayden, in your testimony you have advocated a study on

locating large-scale concentrated solar power on federal land, and

you said a single 250-megawatt facility would occupy 1,250 to 2,500

contiguous acres of land. With the hard, cold facts being that the

proposed drilling areas for ANWR is 2,000 acres, I believe that is

the correct figure, with the potential for recovering over 10 billion

barrels of oil, a possible 50 percent increase in total U.S. proven

reserves creating roughly one million jobs here in the United

States, my question is, can a solar installation produce this much

of a return on the same amount of land or more?

Mr. HAYDEN. Thank you, Congressman, for the question.

Mr. HALL. Did you write the question? You didn’t send me the

question, did you? I really want a good answer.

Mr. HAYDEN. You asked the question in terms of I think productivity of the land is, and obviously we all understand that that is

a very complex topic to look at productivity of land use and so I

think there would be a very imperfect comparison between an

ANWR drilling site and a solar site. In fact, if we look at what the

challenges are to making solar actually competitive, you know, just

on shear costs, we are challenged in the sense that nature has put

together the fossil fuel resources into highly dense form and extracting it with, you know, resource extraction may not have a

52

large footprint but the counterbalance, the land use of the solar

does not deplete the resource. It is working in real time to harvest

sunlight. Secondly, there is a ripple effect where the technology is

advanced into bringing the solar into play. So I would agree with

you that if you look at the footprint alone as one metric competing

against fossil fuel in a highly dense form is very challenging for

any renewable but if you look at how fossil fuel over its entire life

cycle of being replaced could compete with solar, then solar now

has an advantage because the technology is very efficient in terms

of, say, nominally 25 percent conversion of sunlight into energy

where fossil fuel has a much lower efficiency on its entire basis. So

all these things are of course arguable in how you look at it but

the solar technology does have the opportunity to deliver forever

and——

Mr. HALL. They could exist and be compatible together?

Mr. HAYDEN. I think that is a very important point. We have

seen in my work of trying to combine mining uses, for example,

where they have buffer zone and land with productive uses of solar.

Mr. HALL. With us being so totally dependent upon people that

really don’t trust us and we don’t trust, sitting here with a fear

that China will offer them a buck a barrel more than we are paying them, do you like the comparison when they say don’t disturb

little ANWR, the pristine little area of ANWR when it is 19 million

acres and we are using 2,000. Did you hear the comparison that

it would be like putting a postage stamp at the end of a tennis

court and saying that ruined the whole tennis court? The good combination of the two with solar would be the same. It doesn’t hurt

the land at all.

Mr. HAYDEN. Well, I am not sure that Alaska would be a great

place for the solar equipment. It would generate pretty good during

half the year and not so good during the other half of the year, but

I think there is a lot of opportunity for hybrid composite uses of

land.

MORE ON SOLAR CHECK-OFF PROGRAM

Mr. HALL. But you make another point there. If it is dark half

the year, what are they hiding up there anyway?

I have one other question of Dr. Arvizu on the neutrality of the

Department of Energy on check-offs. Are there any other check-off

programs at DOE? Should there be a generic renewable check-off

program? Is that a good use of DOE’s resources? I will just give you

the full barrel.

Dr. ARVIZU. Thank you. Actually there are merits to what I believe are intended in terms of the value that check-off programs

bring. I think the rationale at the Department of Energy is what

is the role of the Department and how should it endorse or otherwise encourage what we think are very appropriate education programs, and I think Mr. Resch actually articulated very nicely the

benefits and the value that educating the public has in terms of

promoting the use of renewable energy. The question is still I think

an open one inside the Department as to whether or not the Department has, you know, a role that couldn’t be satisfied by perhaps closer coordination with the private sector. One of the things

we are trying to do at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

53

is connect very closely with the industry and with the private sector to make sure that our goals and objectives are aligned and

these public-private partnerships provide as much benefit both to

the taxpayer as well as to the private sector. In the end, this is

about making investments. This is about having return on those investments, putting market signals where the value is extracted,

and we have got a lot of work to do in those particular areas. So

the check-off program, although it is important, isn’t the highest

priority that we are working on but we see the merit and the value

of it and open for discussion as to—— Mr. HALL. My time is up. If I had more time, I would ask you

if being open, you mean they are going to remain neutral on checkoff, and question, why shouldn’t DOE be focused on research? And

I may write you a letter and ask you those things.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Hall, and let me also note that

in this draft legislation, no money would come directly from DOE

from the check-off. It would all come from the private sector.

The Chair recognizes Mr. McNerney.

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Mrs. Chairwoman, and I just want

to say that I am very excited about the future of solar and I applaud you for the bill. It is a nicely crafted bill.

MANUFACTURING COST FOR SOLAR ENERGY

You know, the real limitation for solar. You have talked about

education. Education is a limiting factor but the real limitation is

the price. I come from the wind industry and what happens in that

industry is that as we get on the manufacturing curve, the cost

goes down just out of production volume, but I am not convinced

that is the case with solar, especially with photovoltaic. So my

question I guess for Dr. Arvizu is, do you see the technology in photovoltaic and in CSP leading to lower cost with increasing volume

or again is some type of technical limitation going to prevent the

cost from coming down, and if not, could you kind of go into that

a little bit for me?

Dr. ARVIZU. Yeah, sure, and I know that Mr. Resch has something else to say as well. I would offer that the incentive programs

that have been put in place both in Germany and in Japan have

demonstrated very clearly that with these policy measures and incentives and encouraging a market which now has exponential

growth does in fact reduce the cost, and what we are seeing is that

the costs are coming down, things like balance assistance cost inverters and installation costs and things that relate to siting and

installation are all in fact now a much smaller fraction of the overall system cost than they used to be. So it does inform our research

programs because I think there is plenty of space and opportunity

to reduce costs both on what I call the business end of the technology which has to do with the conversion process from solar to

electricity, and whether that is at the cell level for crystalline silicon technology or at the module level when it is thin-film technology, we see tremendous progress being made there, and it is a

matter of a lot more volume, a lot of learning curves. Clearly firstgeneration technology is on an S curve, if you are familiar with

how technology finds its way into the marketplace, and you probVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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ably need to jump onto second-generation technology, which is a

different S curve with different learning curves.

Mr. MCNERNEY. We are past second-generation technology with

solar photovoltaic now, aren’t we?

Dr. ARVIZU. Well, not in the parlance that we use. You know,

first-generation technology is the technology I started with in the

1980s and it is the staple. I sponsored this research literally in

1985 with Dick Swanson at Stanford University. It is now commercial product. Technology that we are working on in the laboratory

now is what we call second generation—thin films, concentrating,

a variety of high-efficiency technologies. There is yet a third generation. That is the organic, really high efficiency, I call it revolutionary. It is maybe a few years down the road but we are right

now trying to get second generation into the marketplace. So there

is a lot of room to be had and I think what you will find is maybe

these companies are investing in second-generation technology

today.

Mr. RESCH. And Congressman, if I could just add a couple of

points in response. We have seen historically the price of solar

come down so when the incentives for solar were dropped in 1983,

the market continued. I mean, it dropped but, you know, we continued to use solar energy, and since 1983 we have seen the price of

photovoltaics come down by 90 percent. The learning curve that we

have seen is for every doubling of manufacturing capacity, we see

about a 20 percent reduction in the price of photovoltaics. So what

is really needed is a long-term stable driver for the market so that

if I am a manufacturer, I am going to scale up my production. I

mean, most of the manufacturing facilities are 20-, 30-, 40-megawatt plants. That is pretty small. We need gigawatts-scale plants,

and the only way you are going to get that is by providing a long

enough incentive so that you can make sure your investment in

that plant is actually returned. And the example I use for wind, I

think we are probably a decade behind wind. Wind has had the

production tax credit, granted on and off, but they have had the

production tax credit for 14 years. Solar has had the investment

tax credit for about 17 months. So, you know, the market is really

just starting in the United States with respect to any kind of market incentives coming from the Federal Government, so we are

hopeful we will see a long-term incentive that will spur manufacturing, then drive down costs.

TAX INCENTIVES FOR SOLAR ENERGY

Mr. MCNERNEY. And, you know, in wind, the tax credits had a

big impact. The initial tax credits were investment tax credits and

they caused a lot of substandard equipment to be put in the field

and it kind of hurt the industry’s reputation for years and years.

What sort of tax incentive do you think would be the most effective

for solar then, given that history?

Mr. RESCH. Because solar tends to be distributed generation and

having a very high upfront cost, we found that the investment tax

credit works best. At the end of the day, the investment tax credit

isn’t large enough for you to put in expensive non-operating equipment. Everything is UL listed. Everything comes with, you know,

certification. Everything has to be grid connected, and with the inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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vestment tax credit, it still has to pay for itself in a reasonable period of time. So we are seeing the commercial segment of the marketplace, so think of Lowe’s, think of Home Depot, Fresh Field

stores putting solar up on their roofs where you have got an energy

manager and you have got an account watching to make sure the

system performs, very sophisticated equipment that is performing,

so the ITC works best for us.

Mr. MCNERNEY. I mean, basically what you have just said is that

the investment tax credit is probably more effective than production tax credits for solar?

Mr. RESCH. That is correct. The production tax credit is—the bottom line is yes, the ITC works better than the PTC.

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thanks for your honesty there. I am out of time.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Mr. Inglis.

TAX INCENTIVES AND NET METERING OF SOLAR ENERGY

Mr. INGLIS. Following up on Mr. McNerney’s questions, what

should be more effective, some kind of tax credit or a net metering

kind of proposal?

Mr. RESCH. You really need both. Net metering allows the system to work effectively, so just to give you an example, on a day

like today, even though I am using air conditioning at my house,

I am generating excess electricity. If Jane was living next door to

me, it would be going into her house and it would be going into

Hal’s house as well, and what that does is, it really stabilizes the

grid. It allows utilities, if you will, although they are still going to

buy peak demand, to have less congestion, less constraint on the

distribution grid.

Mr. INGLIS. It also makes it much more attractive for me to put

into a system, right, because——

Mr. RESCH. Then you wouldn’t have to buy a battery backup system that would store, so it actually is a lower cost. You almost use

the grid, if you will, as your battery or as your reserve.

Mr. INGLIS. Right, and I would also have the capacity to recoup

some of my investment. I mean, we have to figure out a way to pay

for this thing, putting it on my roof, and so a tax credit is one possibility. Another possibility is net metering.

Mr. RESCH. Net metering, it differs by every state. Right now we

don’t have net metering laws so what exists in Maryland is very

different from what we have in Virginia, which is very different

from what we have in D.C. And so it is very difficult from a business model to determine which one is the right one. If we had uniform net metering, that would make a very big difference, and if

you had time-of-use rates, which means that you are paying for the

price of—the real cost of the electricity on a day like today, I guarantee Pepco as they are pulling in new demand isn’t paying eight

cents per kilowatt-hour. They are probably paying 20 cents a kilowatt-hour.

MORE ON SOLAR CHECK-OFF PROGRAM

Mr. INGLIS. Something tells me that our friends at Energy and

Commerce would say they have jurisdiction over that, that net metering thing, but it is fun to dream about such topics. Anyhow, so

56

how about—speaking of jurisdiction, is this a voluntary check-off or

a mandatory check-off?

Mr. RESCH. It is a mandatory check-off program that companies

then have the option of opting out and so it becomes voluntary

after it is created.

Mr. INGLIS. And how does that work?

Mr. RESCH. You would pay into it and then you have the opportunity to request a refund. So what this—the way the structure

works, and this is a very important part, especially as the U.S.

market continues to develop is, we are importing—we may be importing more and more panels from China to avoid a free ridership

use structure of the program so that everybody pays into it initially. If they decide they don’t want to support the program for

whatever reason, then they can opt out and get a reimbursement

for the money that they paid in.

Mr. INGLIS. So what free rider would not go to that extra step

of asking for a refund? Just a lazy free rider that doesn’t realize

their opportunity or—— Mr. RESCH. It forces them to get involved. It forces them to see

the merits of a program. It forces them to either sit on the board

or at least engage with the board as to what the program is all

about and at least they understand it so they are making a conscious decision as opposed to an ignorant, I don’t want to get involved decision, and there is probably peer pressure that would

keep people to participate. I am sure that exists in agriculture too.

Mr. INGLIS. I ask this question—does anybody know, is this a sequential referral or something or—to Energy and Commerce. Do we

have jurisdiction over it? I don’t know. It is an interesting question

if we would have jurisdiction over such a mandatory check-off.

I yield to the Chair.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Mr. Inglis, when we put this legislation together,

we were obviously looking at jurisdiction. Because we had a panel

that was qualified, we thought it was important to come and have

a discussion about this because this is one of the main parts of

what would be so helpful for the industry. That is why we are still

working on that.

STORAGE AND EFFICIENCY OF SOLAR ENERGY

Mr. INGLIS. And a question for the panel is, which is more crucial

to it? Is it a storage question or the efficiency question—efficiency

of conversion? As I understand it, the solar cells—I wish I knew

how to explain it. Roscoe will explain it to us next. He has got the

next question, to explain this conversion issue and the efficiency of

it. I don’t know how to express it. But we are talking a lot about

storage here and we are not talking much about the efficiency of

the conversion.

Mr. ARVIZU. Let me take a stab at that. I think it really comes

down to the economics. It really comes down to how many cents per

kilowatt-hour am I paying life cycle for the power. When you add

storage to concentrating solar power, you improve or increase the

value by a tremendous amount because, as Rhone talked about earlier, you are putting—you are allowing there to be essentially

power generation at a time when you may in fact have peak power

use, which there is a higher value on that certainly to the utility.

57

I know that in Spain there is a feed-in tariff as well and they put

a big premium on having storage, in other words, being able to

generate electricity even past the normal sunlight hours, and by

putting in the generation, the developers actually get an 18—I am

sorry—an 80 percent additional return on investment by putting in

the storage, so that is just in economic terms. The efficiency is important. Typically the cost is important so it is the efficiency and

a cost tradeoff so sometimes you have high efficiency, high cost,

sometimes you have low efficiency, low cost. Sometimes those are

equivalent, and if there is a tradeoff, I think you need to go back

to how many cents per kilowatt-hour life cycle, you know, all in,

all out kind of a metric to determine which one has the most

attractiveness to it.

Mr. HAYDEN. If I could jump in, there is a—Congressman, there

is a diversity of technologies in the solar field which is a good characteristic of the technology space. We are going everywhere from

the photovoltaics that Rhone brought the example of to concentrating solar power, which is large scale, and if I can kind of put

the example out there of, people are very concerned about what

their price of electricity is primarily until the lights go out and

then all of a sudden they start having concern about the reliability

of electricity, and so around the world prices of electricity and reliability both vary situationally. As we start with solar today, the

primary focus outside of this proposed work is on efficiency. Everyone is looking at cost. But as solar becomes more successful, just

like wind has become more successful, then greater attention gets

paid to the reliability. So it depends on where you are in the development. First you worry about cost. Then you worry about cost plus

reliability, and I think that is what is looked at here is that we are

starting to be more realistic about solar than we were a few years

ago.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Mr. Bartlett, please.

CHARACTERIZATION OF SUPPORT FOR SOLAR ENERGY

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. Thank you for your testimony. There are three groups in our country that ought to have

common cause in wanting to move away from fossil fuels to renewables, solar included, and I am wondering if those three groups

have joined—have locked arms or are they now criticizing the other

group’s premise. One is the global warming people, and of course,

after you have paid the carbon price of producing the solar panel,

there is no carbon emission in producing power. There are the national security people, who lament the fact that we are so dependent on foreign oil and to the extent we can use solar, we are going

to use less foreign oil. And there are the peak oil people who believe that although we may muddle through the global warming

and the national security, there is no muddling through peak oil.

If it is not there, it is not there. And these three groups ought to

have common cause. Have they locked arms or are they still criticizing each other’s premise?

Mr. RESCH. I think everyone has been very busy and focused on

their own respective issues, but having said that, there is a very

clear unification that these three issues need to be addressed in a

very similar fashion. They are not mutually exclusive. They have

58

to be dealt with at the same time, and I would say that the groups

working on global warming, national security, peak oil and certainly solar, we are engaged with all three of those groups.

COMPARISON OF CENTRALIZED TO DISTRIBUTED SOLAR

ENERGY

Mr. BARTLETT. Well, the solutions to those problems are exactly

the same: move away from fossil fuels to sustainable renewables

and of course solar is a big one of those. If you have grid tie, what

is the advantage of a large, centralized production rather than putting it over 1,000 home rooftops? I would think that the most widely—the more widely dispersed it is, the better off it is. So why are

we focusing on these big facilities out in the desert that are a long

way from populations, and of course the further you move these

electrons over the wire, the fewer of them reach the other end of

the wire, unlike you putting a gallon of oil in the pipeline 1,000

miles away, you get a gallon of oil. You put electrons in a wire, and

if you are far enough away you get none of them out the other end

of it. So I am having trouble understanding why we are focusing

on these large, centralized productions rather than distributing

them widely over thousands of house roofs.

Mr. ARVIZU. Let me start. I think our infrastructure today is

based on a concept of big power plants, big wires, and so a lot of

it has to do with, so how do we assimilate into the infrastructure

of today. There is actually a cost issue, the larger scale and certainly in the case of concentrating solar power, one can make the

case that there is actually better economics if you aggregate large

scale, put this thing all centrally located. There is a value of distributed generation, which I think is to your point that I think we

probably miss and don’t fully appreciate, and to a large degree we

kind of discriminate against distributed generation because it is

difficult to hang those onto the grid today. We do need an intelligent grid. We need a grid that can accommodate a distributed set

of generation facilities but it is more difficult today to do that. I

think ultimately we get to a point where I think distributed generation is valued at perhaps a premium as opposed—because it allows you lots of other flexibilities. But in today’s environment, central station power is what utilities like, and when you start—you

are talking about RPSs and those things as we have in Colorado.

The way you get there most quickly is large solar farms, large wind

farms, and that is the kind of thing that people are looking at. I

think ultimately we will get to, I think, the broader question that

you are asking, which is the value of distributed generation.

NET METERING

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. Unless you are producing more electricity this month than you use, don’t you automatically have net

metering? If you take the meter out and reverse it, you run it backwards. So if you—that is why they put a seal on it, by the way,

so you can’t do that. Don’t you automatically have net metering

whether the power company wants it or not if you have solar panels on your roof?

59

Mr. RESCH. No, you do not. It depends entirely on your meter.

If you have your standard spinning meter, the answer is yes, you

have the capability of net metering, but it is entirely dependent

upon the law of that state. Each state has different net metering

laws. In some cases you might spin it backwards and they are only

going to pay you wholesale electricity prices rather than retail electricity prices. In some cases they are going to charge you a surcharge for transmission and distribution. It differs by state, every

state.

RELIABILITY OF SOLAR ENERGY

Mr. BARTLETT. I have a question—we need to standardize that,

of course, but I have a question about grid tie and reliability. I

have a wind machine I put up and I find out that it is a grid-tie

wind machine and it has to see 120 or it won’t produce any electricity. As soon as it stops seeing 120, it stops producing electricity.

Now, I understand the reason for that is you don’t want to electrocute the poor lineman who has come to fix the wire because you

are still pumping juice into it after it is down, but just when I need

it most, it is not there. Wouldn’t you think that we would be interested in some backup wherever you have solar panels on your roof,

and shouldn’t we have systems where you can now isolate yourself

from the grid and produce electricity for yourself with some storage

on site? Just when I need it most, now it is not there.

Mr. RESCH. I think you are seeing significant advancements certainly in the private sector, also the National Renewable Energy

Laboratory (NREL) with respect to storage technologies so your

typical lead acid batteries, your car batteries are your best option

today. I think within a couple of years you will see some very sophisticated storage technologies at a much lower price that allow

you to do that, sir.

Mr. BARTLETT. Even if I have the storage facility, my wind machine stops working when it doesn’t see 120, or 240. It just quits.

Mr. RESCH. I am afraid that is a subject for another panel. This

is just a solar group.

Mr. BARTLETT. When you talk of turning that off, I understand

the need for it. You don’t want to be pumping electricity into the

wire when the lineman thinks it is dead so you are going to electrocute him. I understand that. But you need a way to isolate your

home so you still can run your freezer and have lights and so forth

when the power is off, don’t you?

Dr. ARVIZU. You do, and there is power electronics that we are

now working on to solve those kinds of problems so that it is much

more user friendly. We have not really focused on those standalone power applications as effectively as we can or should have because other things have taken priority but we are working on

those.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett.

SOLAR WORKFORCE TRAINING PROGRAM

A couple questions for Ms. Weissman and Mr. Sarubbi. Arizona

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ing, and people are really interested obviously. They come out there

to get out of the cold and the rain and the snow and people want

to take advantage of, you know, the wonderful sunlight we have.

So in terms of this training, what kind of skill shortage do you predict in the future related to solar installation and maintenance

with this increased demand, and can this legislation address this

looming shortage? And also if the two of you would address the

question on whether or not we have communities with these training programs that have actually seen an improvement in terms of

the quality of the installers of the solar panels.

Ms. WEISSMAN. Thank you for the question, Madam Chair. I

think without a doubt, you know, what we are starting with, our

goal here is to have a strong market. In order to have a strong

market, we need to have qualified installers. We need to make sure

that consumer confidence is ensured, that you pay the money that

you are paying for a system that is installed properly and that you

don’t have to come back for service calls or for fixing the initial installation. In order to get to that point, you need training to make

sure that we have a good installer population as well as good product to put out on the roof or in the field. We are certainly finding

that those installers that go through the North American Board of

Certified Energy Producers (NABCEP) certification program are

demonstrating a higher level of quality of installation. Now, that

does not mean that people who are not NABCEP certified are not

qualified. I don’t want to imply that. But we are finding that having to go through the NABCEP credentialing process really takes

a hard look at some of the most important issues including familiarity with the national electrical code, making sure that—you

know, understanding orientation, understanding attachment to the

roof, understanding wiring, understanding all the different major

tasks and subtasks that are necessary to do a competent job so that

we are finding that what the NABCEP certification program is

doing is not only certifying and making sure that we have qualified

workers but we are making sure that the training is set to those

standards to make sure that they know what they are doing, and

I think that what NABCEP has done in addition to elevating the

workforce, it has also increased the need for good training and education. And we get calls all the time, we get e-mails all the time,

where can I get training so I can become NABCEP certified. So

what we are seeing is that not only is the credential a great signal

to consumers but it is also increasing the need for better training.

Mr. SARUBBI. If I could add to my colleague Jane here, New York

State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) has

tied their incentive package to people who are certified, NABCEP

certified. So at least the homeowners who are reaping the benefits

of this incentive are at least assured that they are getting it from

a certified installer, so that is helping improve the standards. And

as Jane mentioned, we are getting a lot of phone calls for training

in Hudson Valley with the sponsorship of the Interstate Renewable

Energy Council (IREC) as well as NYSERDA are doing national

electrical code training seminars, you know, for the electrical inspectors out there but also building inspectors. We are doing specific training in that area, bringing as many building inspectors

into the fold and the type of solar systems that they are going to

61

have to go out and approve in the community. So that in itself is

helping the standards increase alone. And it is amazing. We had

a web site put up just a few months ago as we were getting our

solar program off the ground and the amount of hits that we are

getting on that web site, you know, showing the interest, you know,

from the community out there is tremendous and I am getting

nervous from the amount of e-mails that I am receiving on a daily

basis from people who are interested in the training, either to receive the training or homeowners who are interested in actually

have somebody who is certified, you know, to be able to install it,

so they are coming to Hudson Valley. That is where they looking

for that information because they are going out in the web: who

can I get to come install a nice solar system on the house that I

know it is going to be a credibly installed system and it is going

to be—you know, meet all the standards of industry. So we are seeing that growth.

Ms. GIFFORDS. The Chair recognizes Mr. Udall.

MORE ON SOLAR WORKFORCE TRAINING

Mr. UDALL. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to come and

hear from the panel today. This is an area, as you all know, of

great fascination but also great potential. I also wanted to show my

solidarity with Dr. Arvizu, who heads up the National Renewable

Energy Laboratory, which is in part located in my district in Colorado. This is such an exciting time for us I think as a country and

as a broad industry. In Colorado we recently passed Amendment

37, which put a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in place for the

State of Colorado, and I took advantage of that opportunity. I now

have a three and one half kilowatt system on my roof. It is fun to

make electricity and at the right time of day to go out and see the

meter running backwards and knowing that you are not only reducing your own bill but you are putting some power back on the

grid. So I want to thank the Chairwoman for holding this really,

really important hearing and giving us the opportunity as Members

of Congress not only to learn more about what the potential is but

also what we can do to help provide greater incentives. Having arrived late, I don’t know all the questions that have been asked but

I am curious, given the great team that came to install the system

on my home, what sorts of stories that the panel has heard both

positive and in some cases negative about workers without training

attempting to install solar panels. I don’t know who would be best

to speak to that question. Ms. Weissman?

Ms. WEISSMAN. Thank you, Congressman. Well, there are always

stories to tell, and I think that we were finding problems. We are

seeing the problems. You know, shading is a big issue. Certainly

in some parts of the country with, you know, the trees, a small tree

today could be a big tree tomorrow and so are seeing that those,

you know, installers who are not properly trained are not, you

know, realizing that shading is a real issue, and if they don’t see

the tree and the leaves and even the trees in the winter when

there are no leaves in certain parts of this country that this will

be a problem. Most states do require that a licensed electrician do

the final hookup of the system, and we think that is great and that

is how it should be, but what we are also finding is that different

62

trades who know their trade very well may not know solar very

well, and so certainly training is very important on the actual, you

know, the characteristics of solar and the technology and what is

needed to put up a good system. So what we are finding and you

know, what we are seeing now too with more incentives going on

both at the State level and the federal level, is what we want to

prevent is any guy or gal with a truck and a ladder to think they

can put this stuff up on the roof. That is not true. You know, it

is going to be a problem. So that even those people that may feel

that they are doing a good job may in fact not be. It was interesting, when we started NABCEP, the certification program, we

had a lot of the old timers say, you know, I am not going to take

a test, I know what I have been doing, I have been doing this for

20 years, grandfather me in, and we said absolutely not; we are not

going to give you a seal of approval. You know, if you know what

you are doing, you are going to pass this four-hour exam and, you

know, that will show proof that we can give you the certification

mark. So we are pretty serious in terms of making sure that if we

are going to certify somebody, they know what they are doing and

prevent some of the stories that we have heard or that we have

seen, some of the mistakes that have been made, some of the stupid mistakes that have been made out in the field. What we want

to make sure is customers are going to get, you know, a well-run

system that is going to last a long time.

Mr. RESCH. And just to add one other comment. The IBEW has

done, I think an excellent job in training in certain key markets

but starting to go national training their members to certify and

install solar systems in an appropriate manner. So I think that— when you start to see that shift where you have large trade unions,

where you have, you know, large roofer groups starting to reach

out and train and educate and, if you will, give them new skill sets,

I think that is a fundamental sea change in the capability of installers going forward. Certainly linking with Jane’s program at

NABCEP is absolutely critical as well.

Ms. WEISSMAN. But if I can just add onto Mr. Resch’s comment,

the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and

the National Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee

(NJATC) do sit on the board of directors of the North American

Board of Certified Energy Practitioners so we have been very involved with the union from day one. In addition, the NJATC, the

training arm for the IBEW, just published a fantastic textbook on

photovoltaic systems which I know that a lot of the community colleges are beginning to use as their main learning tool.

Mr. UDALL. I see my time has expired. If the Chairwoman would

indulge me for 30 more seconds?

Speaking to your comment about shading not only with leaves on

trees but the tree branches themselves, that was one of the processes we had to go through. We had a big old cottonwood tree that

was blocking at certain times of the day the system, and I found

out in the process of installing the system that if you have any

shading on any part of the system, it affects the overall system in

very dramatic ways. So we had to make the decision. It was almost

like letting go of your firstborn child, taking down this tree, but I

was convinced that taking down the tree was worth the pain beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
63

cause of the benefits that you accrue, and I was told that taking

down the tree but at the same time installing the system was the

equivalent of planting 100 more trees. So I hope that sales job was

accurate. This was a learning process for myself and my family.

I thank the Chairwoman for her indulgence and for holding this

very, very important hearing. These technologies and what our economic future will involve. It is also about energy security and about

environmental benefits, so this is very, very important. Thank you.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Mr. Inglis.

Mr. HAYDEN. Could I add to some of those comments, Madam

Chair? Some comments have been made including yours just now

which I would like to kind of try to—understanding though that

the issues that we are running into about the shading, the tree,

distributed—point up that there is need for more than one piece of

the solar solution and the distributed solution that has a lot of public popularity has its limits that are important for us to overcome

to get a large percentage of our energy to come from solar. For example, we have our solar test site in Tempe, Arizona, and I can tell

you that the college students that live in the condos and the urban

area, they do not have the option of having solar on their roof. I

live in Tempe, and even though I work on solar, my solar panels

are with APS’s site at Prescott, Arizona, and the reason is, as an

engineer I know that they are far more productive than they would

be on my roof, and that is important to me. If I am going to see

a lot of our resources put into a very important solar panel and

also find storage options, I don’t want to see them wasted in an imperfect application. So to address some of the points made, there

is—about 85 percent of the energy that comes from a Four Corners

power plant makes it to the customer in Phoenix. The highest fraction of that energy goes over the wires. The wires are very good

at delivering energy. So even though we do see the value of rooftop

solar, it certainly won’t get us to the 40 percent-type number that

solar I think could get if we are allowed to build larger facilities

that are more efficient, bring the power in to where it is needed,

and secondly, to bring in the storage technologies that would allow

the utility to help provide that backup power that otherwise these

panels can’t do on their own. So it underscores I think one of the

values of this discussion is that it is not a one size, one solution

fits all. If we want mainstream America to use solar, we have got

to make it easy. We can’t just make it for us environmentally motivated folks to be the only ones using solar. Thank you.

EFFICIENCY OF SOLAR ENERGY

Mr. INGLIS. A follow-up on that. If the efficiency of the conversion

were higher, it would make the distributed more attractive, right?

Mr. HAYDEN. No, not at all. The efficiency is a good parameter

but the fluctuation is the issue that talks about reliability. In fact,

when we build a project of any size, we have to look at the reliability on customers. The Congressman talked about the wind system tripping. That also affects things like your power electronics,

manufacturing businesses, power quality. So if you do have an efficient system that is good for its economics but there will be interruptions from clouds. There will be interruptions for other reasons

and we have to match the load.

64

STORAGE FOR SOLAR ENERGY

Mr. INGLIS. Which brings me to the other question which is

about the storage issue which, from what I have been hearing this

morning, is crucial. It seems that the section of the bill—sections

of the bill dealing with that are relatively brief. Is there something

else we should be saying in those sections about storage besides

what we are saying here?

Mr. HAYDEN. We discussed that before. We provided testimony

on that very subject because we see more than just the thermal

being possible storage solutions. The thermal is worth mentioning

because in the case of certain technologies, thermal is very directly

used but there is other proven large-scale solar technology for storage—I am sorry—storage technologies such as compressed air energy storage, other things that while we are all waiting and working on the new batteries, there are things that can be done sort of

on a regional basis.

Mr. INGLIS. I suppose these battery breakthroughs really could

also be the—I mean, there are a number of things that if they

broke could make it so that there—if we had the breakthroughs in

a various number of areas, you would have wide scale—more use

of the resource, right?

Dr. ARVIZU. There is no question about that. Storage has continued, as I call it, to be the Achilles heel of renewable energy in general. If we just had a better storage system—we have been working

on batteries for a very long time, literally, you know, decades. And

progress is slow. Progress—we are making progress but progress is

slow, and I think ultimately, you know, converting wind and the

other intermittent type of resources to some sort of energy carrier

like hydrogen or compressed air, whatever it might be, is really

going to change the economic equation considerably. I know I sit

on the National Science Board and we are doing things for—actually trying to provide power at the South Pole while we are doing

some fairly energy-intensive experiments, and what are looking for

stand-alone systems that are not polluting, because right now we

have got—we are polluting in the southern hemisphere because of

all the diesel fuel that we are using down there. And we are looking for, you know, some of these advanced concepts that down

there you would pay an exorbitant amount of money for that particular application and there are some things—we are looking at

how can you convert wind energy to hydrogen and to use it when

you essentially—when the wind doesn’t blow or solar energy to hydrogen or a variety of other technologies and things, and I think

ultimately you need to look at that whole system’s architecture. So

you need to look at them in the broadest context. You know, I am

very bullish on the fact of zero-energy buildings. We use more energy in buildings than in most any other application that we have

and so the distributed value on a building that is efficiently designed with its own power generation source and its own storage

has great value and benefit. At the systems level, is it still a little

bit costly although we are making huge progress and we have got

examples of Habitat for Humanity homes that generate more energy that they consume, and so it can be done on a modest building, and it is a matter of changing a variety of things. It is what

65

we talked about earlier, bring the price signal where the decisions

are being made. You know, construction for buildings is not

incentivized to save energy. And so all those things need to be part

of the package and I think we need to look more holistically at the

whole issue.

CONVERSION TO HYDROGEN

Mr. INGLIS. To the objection I hear, and when I talk about hydrogen, about why convert, just out of curiosity, it is not exactly a subject of this hearing but why convert to hydrogen in those cases you

talked about, particularly at the Poles where Dr. Bartlett and I

saw the same thing you are talking about, diesel fuel being brought

in belching out the smokestacks when we got a lot of wind and a

solar there.

Dr. ARVIZU. The why convert part is because it really is an elegant solution. You don’t pollute anything, obviously. You convert—

you know, you change water to hydrogen and oxygen and then you

use the energy and it converts back to water. It is very costly at

this point and that is the reason that we don’t do it more, you

know, uniformly elsewhere. But in that particular environment, the

cost that you pay for the energy of transporting fossil fuel down

there is exorbitant and there is just no reason why you wouldn’t

in terms of economics do the thing that is less environmentally insulting than the other thing.

Mr. INGLIS. Thank you.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Mr. Hall.

Mr. HALL. Thank you.

MORE ON SOLAR CHECK-OFF PROGRAM

Mr. Resch, you know, as in some other fields, global warming, for

instance, everybody talks about the cost and the fears and the projections and predictions and all but most of those people that are

recommending that we just go all out on global warming fail to talk

about cost. They shy away from that. They don’t want to talk about

who has to go by the cash register at a time when China is polluting on an increasing ratio with coal. So I will ask you something. How about the industry? Has anyone expressed any concern

about planning the assessment, and will this result in increased

cost to the consumer? I don’t see how you can keep from it, but you

would have to answer that. And how much would the assessment

be and how is it going to be done, case-by-case basis or individually?

Mr. RESCH. Thank you for your question, and with respect to the

check-off program, I think there is initially concern about what is

the right way to structure it, where do you assess within the solar

stream, how far upstream, how far downstream, do you assess at

the installer or do you assess at the manufacturer, should it include all equipment, should it just include PV modules, what about

solar water heating. There are a lot of questions and I think good

questions that need to be resolved and I think the way this program is structured is, it has flexibility, that all the rules are not

set in stone, that there is an opportunity to adjust the rate or determine an appropriate rate that would actually produce an approVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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priate amount of money that, you know, first the industry is willing to spend and raise and that it doesn’t penalize the consumer

or penalize the manufacturer to the greatest extent. So, you know,

I would say we don’t have all the answers but part of that is the

discussion with the Department of Energy and getting the board

together to determine what is the right level and just make sure

all the right players are involved. I mean, we have a couple of suggestions in our written testimony for improvements to the program

and I think what you will find is that most or all of the manufacturers will agree that what is needed is a campaign along these

lines. They may disagree on timing when that program should be

in place but all of them want to participate and make sure they

have a voice in the development of that program.

Mr. HALL. Well, we got airliners that, all except Southwest, are

going broke flying full and going broke because of fuel and they

have to turn to the consumer. You might hear in the city of Washington the cab drivers I think at midnight last night increased

their minimum fee to $2.50 instead of $1.50. That has gone up almost 50 percent. How are we going to keep the assessment from

going to the consumer? Why wouldn’t it?

Mr. RESCH. Well, there is two ways to look at it, one of which

is that as there is more competition, there is a lot more pressure

on the price downward, and when you look at the oil and gas industry other than propane, they shy away from any kind of structure along these lines because it actually goes back to the producer,

that the costs are passed back to the producer, not onto the consumer because the consumer is only willing to spend so much, and

what we have really seen in the solar industry in the last couple

of years is increased competition, increased competition to put

cheaper panels. They are scaling up manufacturing. Prices are

coming down. You know, feedstock materials are starting to increase in supply and again putting downward pressure on the

price. It is unclear. I mean, I think if you were to step back with

an economist, you would have one—two economists, one of them

would say it is going to be passed on to the consumer, the other

would say that the manufacturers will absorb the cost. But I think

what we are looking for, you know, is a level of assessment that

is small enough so that it is not a major hit on either side, the

manufacturer’s side or the installer’s side but yet collectively as

this industry grows, we can use those resources to educate the public on the benefits of solar energy.

Mr. HALL. To be continued?

Mr. RESCH. To be continued. Absolutely.

Mr. HALL. Let me ask the panel, if I have some more time here.

The language of the bill provides for criminal penalties for release

of information obtained under the authority of the Act to ‘‘any

agency or officer of the United States for any purpose other than

implementation of this Act.’’ What information do you think they

are seeking to protect here? What is being protected, and do you

agree that criminal penalties are necessary?

Mr. RESCH. Well, I think a lot of it is confidential business information and, you know, I think that part of that provision you are

referring to goes back to the hey, you know, we need you to open

your books in order for us to make sure that what you are reportVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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ing to us is accurate if you are participating in this program and

that if that information leaks out-a lot of it is CBI that you would

want to make sure that companies are comfortable with the government looking into their books with respect to confidential business information, if I am referring to the section of the bill that you

are.

Mr. HALL. It is a mandatory program?

Mr. RESCH. It is a mandatory program that companies can opt

out of.

Mr. HALL. And it is pretty strong language, ‘‘any agency or officer,’’ that provides for criminal penalties. That is pretty strong. Do

you agree that criminal penalties are necessary?

Mr. RESCH. I think that what——

Mr. HALL. You may not have an opinion.

Mr. RESCH. This program is modeled after the existing agriculture programs and, you know, what I would say is, certainly we

can discuss the right way to ensure compliance and maybe that is

an overly aggressive way and maybe the way it works in agriculture shouldn’t—you know, we shouldn’t be doing it in energy.

But I would say this is modeled after existing programs. So it

seems to have worked previously but certainly there is opportunities to modify it if necessary.

Mr. HALL. My time is up. There is a lot more we could discuss,

but I can do that with you by letter. I thank you.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Hall.

MORE ON SOLAR CHECK-OFF PROGRAM

And Mr. Resch, just to clarify, how many other programs are out

there that we are looking at? I know we talked about milk, we

talked about beef.

Mr. RESCH. There are 17 programs right now between energy

and agriculture that are promotion programs along these lines.

Ms. GIFFORDS. And have there been problems with companies

and confidentiality and issues like this in the past that we know

of?

Mr. RESCH. I would have to get back to you on that. I don’t have

specific examples. I imagine that they are consistently written in

the same manner in order to address concerns that have been

raised in the past but I am not entirely sure.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Mr. Hall, we will get back to you on that because

I am curious as well.

Mr. Bartlett.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. I would just like to note

that if there were an unending succession of ANWRs and we were

willing to pay the price for sequestering the CO2, we wouldn’t need

to be talking about solar, would we? But the reality is that there

is not an unending succession of ANWRs. I have ten kids, 15

grandkids and two great-grandkids, and wouldn’t it be nice if I left

them a little energy for their future, which is one of the reasons

I won’t vote to drill in ANWR until they commit to me they are

going to use all the energy from ANWR to invest in alternatives

because today we have no surplus energy to invest in alternatives

or oil wouldn’t be $69 a barrel, right?

68

I would also like to note that unless you are making hydrogen

from a non-fossil fuel, using hydrogen probably results in a larger

carbon footprint than not using it unless you are going to use it in

a fuel cell, which we don’t yet have because you will always get less

energy from the less hydrogen that you get from the energy source

in which you produced it. If that is a fossil fuel, obviously burning

hydrogen in a reciprocating engine is going to leave a larger carbon

footprint than if you hadn’t used the original fuel. Just noting how

we are creatures of habit, I was at the South Pole twice in the last

five years. For six months the sun shines all day, every day and

the wind never stops blowing, and we create essentially all of our

power there from flown-in diesel. Now, is that dumb? We are really

creatures of habit, aren’t we?

You know, the sun is 93 million miles away. I have a place in

West Virginia. My friends are amazed that I make ice from the

sun. I have a Sun Frost refrigerator hooked up. But I put my first

solar panels on the roof. I have 153 acres. They said, why in the

devil are you doing that. You know, the sun is 93 million miles

away. If I put it on the roof or on the ground beside the building,

it makes no difference as far as the sun is concerned. It is very

much cheaper and easier to put it down on the ground. So unless

you are in a subdivision and have got to put it on your roof, don’t

put it on your roof. It is a whole lot easier to maintain on the

ground. A big cost, a big part of the cost of putting in these solar

panels is just the carpentry or whatever you want to call it to

mount these things, and you don’t need to have some guy do that,

you know. The Home Depot has a great slogan, ‘‘You can do it. We

can help.’’ We need to be telling these people how to mount it. I

don’t have any problem with a certified electrician hooking up the

power. Wiring them and hooking it is a very small part of the cost

of putting them in, and you don’t need to have somebody come put

it in. If you can change a faucet washer, you can install solar panels. It really isn’t that tough. So I would just encourage you, you

don’t need to further increase the cost of putting these in. You can

do it; we can help, and we need some help out there like, you know,

you don’t put it where it is going to be shaded and so forth.

MORE ON STORAGE FOR SOLAR

Let me ask you a question about storage. Isn’t it true that for

these large facilities, it is hard to beat the battery that never fails,

which is—unless you have to replace the pump or the turbine. Why

don’t we just pump water uphill and then let it flow back when we

need the energy? Isn’t that about as good a battery as we can get

with about as high efficiency as any battery we have got?

Mr. HAYDEN. Simple answer, yes.

Mr. BARTLETT. Yes. If the project permits it, why shouldn’t we

be doing that everywhere?

Mr. HAYDEN. Well, everywhere including desert climates where

water is—Arizona is an example where it is done today on hydro

plants that exist. Creating a new hydro plant just for that purpose

would require a high reservoir, a low reservoir, water, et cetera. So

those are the practical issues. I do recognize pumped hydros being

a very excellent efficient solution when you can do it. Compressed

air is another one that we are looking at it because it has similar

69

favorable attributes, different implementation. But in terms of Arizona as an example, most of the lakes, water flows downhill so

there are those places where it has been done, Roosevelt Lake and

others, I believe, but I think that in terms of creating new lakes

just for that purpose, that would be quite a challenge on the water

side.

Mr. BARTLETT. There are a lot of places where the topography

and the water available—— Mr. HAYDEN. If I may, I know that those discussions have been

taken to the dam operators and they have had challenges in terms

of their most economical operation of that asset. So you would have

to take that question to some of the existing dam operators.

Mr. BARTLETT. I would just like to note that if you don’t have

electricity, the thing you miss the most is lights, and it is very

easy, and I would encourage—I would hope that we would encourage people if they are putting in a stand-alone system that they

use direct current lights. You don’t need an inverter. It is really

simple. You have a solar panel and you have lights, and if they are

direct current, they work, and there is really nothing to fail. So the

first thing you miss in your home when the electricity goes off is

the lights go off, and if you are looking at those things that make

life comfortable, you know, being able to see and have lights is very

essential, and that is pretty much a failsafe system if you have direct current, DC. If you have 120 volts, you got that really complicated inverter full of—I don’t trust computers in these little

things. They may or may not work. The lead acid battery works all

the time, doesn’t it? And you don’t need anything in between the

battery and your 12-volt or 24-volt or 48-volt valise on your fluorescent lights, do you? It is a very efficient use of electricity and very

failsafe, and I think more people ought to be encouraged to put

those in, and that is so you can see your way around the house

when the lights go out, right?

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. Bartlett.

WATER USE FOR CONCENTRATING SOLAR POWER

We don’t have a tremendous amount of time left and I would like

the panel to focus a few minutes on this issue of water, and Mr.

Hayden, perhaps Dr. Arvizu as well. You know, obviously out west

we do have some real issues in terms of just not having the water.

We have got 25 million users on the Colorado River right now. We

are in a drought. We have increased demands of the current water

supply that we do have. So I am interested in terms of the requirements for a CSP plant. Can they be built to use air cooling instead

of water cooling enabled to eliminate the water requirements, and

are water constraints an obstacle to the wider adoption in your

opinion of CSP technologies?

Mr. HAYDEN. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, water is an issue.

It is one of the issues that is on the sequence of working through

the biggest challenge of cost just to get us started which fortunately, in my years of working this, I see a lot of progress right

now so I am happy to hear that we are starting to look at the

water, meaning that we are serious about this moving forward, and

it is absolutely an issue. The present day CSP systems use water

70

for cooling to about the extent that a conventional power plant

does, and therefore it is acceptable in some views but we would like

to do better. Obviously a lot of farmland is getting converted for

residential largely because of water so the water situation is not

static. It is becoming more of a pressure. So in every sense if we

want to use more of this energy technology, reducing water use is

important. In terms of the present-day designs, there is something

called air cooling where they replace the water evaporation cycle

with fans and just move the air through a radiator-type structure.

That can be done today but it wasn’t the economical solution for

the present-day installations. It is available today but we would

like our cake and eat it too. We would like it to be available and

also more efficient and less costly. Secondly, I will mention that

other concentrating solar power technologies including concentrated photovoltaics, dish engine technologies don’t use water

cooling at all. So when we again talk about CSP, usually we are

talking about the trough technology with water cooling but there

are other technology solutions that will compete with the trough

and so a trough needs to try to move itself forward with water reduction and at the same time these other technologies might come

forward and be low-water-use technologies. In fact, we sometimes

notice how little water is valued on a dollar basis and yet how

much it is valued on an emotional basis, and that sort of contradiction is what we are grappling here with on its application with

solar.

Dr. ARVIZU. If I could add just a little bit on that. Absolutely, I

think we have been looking at technologies that really don’t use,

you know, any water that is not self-contained in the system. You

know, for a long time, I can remember in the 1980s we looked at

a variety of gas-cooled reactors. We looked at—we have actually

the best heat transfer medium for these concentrating thermal systems is typically a molten salt or something that has got a very

high specific heat to it. So you don’t have really a contained water

need for the actual, you know, working end of those particular

plants and there are ways to get around having to use any water

if you really chose to do that, but it is a matter of economics. It

is a matter of pushing the technology and making it most cost-effective. And there is in fact as Mr. Hayden says this whole idea

that you can put concentrating photovoltaics. The biggest problem

with these concentrating systems, as I mentioned in my testimony,

is the upfront capital cost, and one of the things that we are looking at is how can you reduce that cost dramatically in some of

these concentrating—troughs in fact are some things that are being

pioneered right now in Australia that are I think very cost-effective

and also can be done in a manner that is very, very miserly relative to the water use. So this is not a problem that I believe is

in any way a showstopper or couldn’t be overcome but for the will

and the R&D program that goes along with trying to stand up with

some pilots to make sure that it operates the way we think it ought

to.

CONCENTRATING SOLAR POWER

Ms. GIFFORDS. A couple other questions, because I know we are

running out of time. First of all, APS, Mr. Hayden, I understood

71

took 14 years to construct the solar trough, 14 years, I think. Why

was the hiatus so long, and is that something that we can learn

from as well?

Mr. HAYDEN. Well, the proper way to look at that 14 years is,

no one had done it in 14 years and we chose to pursue that, and

I will give you a pragmatic answer. I have been going to DOE

meetings for all my career and having the solar industry run up

and say buy 100-megawatt power plant and everything will be fine.

Now, we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars when

they do that and we under a regulated structure do not have the

opportunity to just spend hundreds of millions of dollars that is not

least cost so what we chose to do was to challenge those solar companies to make a small-scale plant just to prove that they could get

on their feet again because the present regime of folks making the

trough is not the same folks that built it decades ago and they actually needed to give a new start. So literally when they built our

first megawatt, it was all of a sudden kind of a deer in the headlights moment when oh, you mean we really have to build this

thing, and they had fundamental decisions such as were they going

to use aluminum or were they going to use steel, who were they

going to get their tubes from. So fortunately, even though one onemegawatt is a very small project, it gave them the opportunity to

start getting it together, and then when they had the 64-megawatt

opportunity in Nevada, they had momentum. All I can say that we

did was, we broke the ice. We didn’t have dollars available under

our regulated structure to buy hundreds of megawatts but we did

have the dollars available to break the ice.

MORE ON SOLAR WORKFORCE TRAINING

Ms. GIFFORDS. Before I turn to Mr. Inglis, Mr. Resch, if you could

address Mr. Bartlett’s comments about—and I know he had to

leave—about just anyone being able to kind of put on these solar

panels and—I mean, I am not an expert but it sounds—what I

have seen is pretty complicated stuff.

Mr. RESCH. There is two points I will make there. First is that

Home Depot does sell solar panels in New Jersey and in California,

and if you wanted to go out and by a solar system, you could do

it. Say you have a garden shed and you wanted to put lights up

in the back, very simple, you know, something you could do. You

are dealing with electricity so you have got to be smart about it

and so you don’t want anybody—you don’t want your kids running

out there and playing around with it. I mean, it is electricity. But

when you really do step back and understand electricity, it is fairly

understandable. Now, he is referring to a direct current, a DC,

versus what we actually use in our homes, which is alternating

current, so it gets a little more complicated. You have more equipment. I decided to use a contractor to install the solar system in

my house because I don’t want to climb up on a roof, first of all.

Second of all, I don’t really understand electricity all that well in

the sense of how I install it in my home, and just like anything

else, I went out and I got three bids, and so when Congressman

Udall was talking about shading and all the rest, well, you know,

there is a little bit of the buyer beware. You want to get three bids,

just like you would for any system. When you install an air condiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
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tioning system in your house, a hot water heater, you are going to

get a couple of bids and then find out which one is the best and

which one seems the most knowledgeable. So I would tend to say

that we are not quite there with the technology to say it is plug

and play, any consumer could go out and just quickly install it on

their house with respect to photovoltaics. I think we will get there

at some point in time. We are not there yet.

Mr. SARUBBI. Can I just add to that? Teaching electricity in my

entire career and former electrician, I would be a little nervous to

know that homeowners were going to go out on a regular basis and

install systems, you know, when we talk about grounding needs,

when we start talking about liability because the first time there

is a fire at somebody’s house, the thing you hear most often is that

it came from electricity, it was an electrical problem. So we certainly don’t want to create that environment with the solar industry where people are going to Home Depot and not that they can’t

buy that small type of system but if I am going to be putting a

3KW, seven or even 10KW system on my house, I want to know

that it is installed by a certified, you know, company that I have

got longevity with that system and so I would be a little leery

about moving in that direction at this point in the industry. And

DC in reference to AC, converters today are so much more efficient

and reliable, you know, that I don’t see the conversion of moving

to DC, you know, in our house, direct current power and retrofitting all our lights for that, you know, environment, as opposed

to staying with alternating current just doesn’t make sense at this

point.

MORE ON SOLAR CHECK-OFF PROGRAM

Mr. INGLIS. Just one quick follow-up. We were talking earlier

about the reporting requirements and the disclosure of information,

and did anybody want to make any further comments about that?

Is there something about the disclosure of information that was of

concern in previous programs, these 17 programs?

Dr. ARVIZU. I am not exactly sure what the major issues were.

We are aware of some lawsuits that have been brought against the

U.S. Department of Agriculture based on those programs. It kind

of—it highlights the fact that there is a liability issue or risk that

comes along with monitoring or administering one of these programs, and I don’t have the details of that but I would suggest that

there is a lot more to be—to explore regarding what assumption of

liabilities there are in administering the program.

Mr. INGLIS. I have no further questions, Madam Chair.

Ms. GIFFORDS. Before bringing this hearing to a close, I just

want to thank all of our panelists and I really want to thank you

for the time and the effort that went into preparing for your testimony today and for helping to craft this legislation. I also want to

thank the other Members for being here and asking some great

questions. I learned a lot and I hope that Members did and the

general public as well.

The record will be held open for additional statements from the

Members and for answers to any follow-up questions the Subcommittee may ask the witnesses. The witnesses are excused and

the hearing is now adjourned. Thank you all very much.

73

[Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

(75)

Appendix 1:

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

76

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Herbert T. Hayden, Solar Technology Coordinator, Arizona Public

Service Company, Phoenix, Arizona

As the Solar Technology Coordinator for APS, my field of activity has been on the

technological assessment and advancement of solar technologies. I am pleased to

offer my views on the technical topics such as thermal energy storage, solar integration to regional transmission grids, and reduction of water consumption as these

issues relate to larger scale solar technologies such as concentrated solar projects

(CSP).

However, there are other aspects of the proposed legislation pertaining to workforce training and the promotion of solar power anti certification, which are policies

more directly impacting manufacturers and installers of photovoltaic systems (PV),

and other solar-related equipment. Those questions would be better answered by

those individuals who are more familiar with the public policy concerns associated

with the development of the solar industries. My answers in those areas are limited

and I respectfully defer to others who may feel qualified to address those issues.

Questions submitted by Representative Ralph M. Hall

Q1. Are you familiar with the Institute of Sustainable Power? Do you feel comfortable having them run a certification program? What type of a fee would you

envision would be required for them to ‘‘certify’’ workforce training programs?

A1. I am not familiar with the Institute of Sustainable Power

Q2. Have you reviewed the legislation being proposed here today? Do you think it

makes sense to create two additional layers of bureaucracy for the Secretary of

Energy to promote solar power or do you feel it would be easier to just give DOE

a grant to promote solar power? Please explain.

A2. We believe the objectives of the legislation regarding thermal storage and CSP

are appropriate and productive. I have not reviewed the referenced legislation in regards to the education and promotion of solar power, and I do not have an opinion

on those aspects.

Q3. Do you think solar power needs to be promoted in order to be successful as an

energy resource?

A3. I believe that solar power is a proven energy technology, however the costs of

solar are still too high for it to compete as an energy resource of substantial scale.

Solar costs can be further reduced as the technology advances and matures, and incentives for the use of solar will allow that to happen more quickly. Promotion of

the benefits of solar power can also encourage the use of solar.

Q4. Do you support the language in the bill that requires private companies to open

their books and records to Members of the Board for inspection?

A4. I have no opinion on this question.

Q5. The language of the bill provides for criminal penalties for release of information obtained under the authority of the Act to ‘‘any agency or officer of the

United States for any purpose other than implementation of this Act.’’ What information do you believe this language is seeking to protect? Do you agree criminal penalties are necessary?

A5. I have no opinion on this question.

Q6. The language of section 9 requires the continuation of the solar promotion board

and committee should be contingent upon a vote by the manufacturers and importers. Would you support a referendum prior to creation of the Board and

Committee? Why or why not?

A6. I have no opinion on this question.

Q7. What enforcement by the Secretary of Energy do you envision that might warrant a civil penalty for noncompliance under section 10 of this bill? Is this section necessary?

A7. I have no opinion on this question.

Q8. What type of investigation do you believe it would be necessary for the Secretary

of Energy to conduct under Section 11 of this bill?

77

A8. I have no opinion on this question.

Q9. How will your organization benefit from this legislation?

A9. APS, as a public utility with a strong commitment to the development of renewable energy resources would derive benefits from a comprehensive energy bill that

a) provided incentives for utility use of solar, such as the ITC, and b) aided in technical areas such as thermal energy storage, reduced water consumption, and the integration of CSP facilities with regional transmission grids.

Q10. What kind of yearly revenues does the solar industry have which could be used

in a promotion program as envisioned by the legislation?

A10. I do not have the knowledge of the facts pertaining to solar industry revenues.

Q11. Where does each of you see solar power as a part of the Nation’s energy mix

by 2015 by percentage if this bill is enacted?

A11. Solar is the largest renewable energy resource in Arizona. If you add the possibility of integrating solar energy into the regional transmission grid and improving

its availability with storage or other methods, the contribution of solar energy in

sunny regions like the southwest could help states in the southwest and west reach

their overall renewable energy goals, which currently range from 10 percent to 20

percent or more. I am not in a position to determine how this would translate to

the Nation’s energy mix as a whole, where other renewable energy resources may

also contribute a substantial share of the Nation’s energy mix. However, from a

technical perspective, the intermittent nature of solar energy resources requires

utilities to rely heavily upon conventional energy resources to meet customer demands and to protect infrastructure. If technology is developed to allow for solar energy storage or other means of making the output of a solar plant firm and reliable,

this would make solar energy more viable for a greater share of the Nation’s energy

mix.

Q12. What is your view of cost sharing of the training programs between the states

and Federal Government?

A12. I have no opinion on this question.

Q13. Are the unions opposed to the training provisions in the bill?

A13. I have no information on this topic.

Q14. Is the Draft discussion draft duplicative of any current programs? If so which

ones? What are the metrics that will evaluate success of the training or solar

programs?

A14. I have no information on this topic.

Q15. Recognizing the scarce resources of the Federal Government, would you rather

see tax dollars go to innovative technologies or advertising solar power?

A15. From my perspective as a technologist, federal support for innovative technologies is critical. However, the question about whether advertising is a more effective way to use tax dollars is outside of the purview of my work and is an issue

better answered by others.

Q16. In your opinion why does the contribution of solar power remain relatively low?

Is it ultimately due to the cost?

A16. Cost is certainly a major reason the contribution of solar power in the overall

energy mix remains low today. In addition, most solar technologies generate electricity only when the sun is shining so other sources of electricity are necessary to

provide firm electric power in response to customer demand. For those solar power

technologies that include storage capability, cost continues to be a factor since the

cost of storage adds to the overall cost of the infrastructure. Both issues will need

to be addressed for solar to become a larger part of the electric energy mix for any

electric power utility.

Q17. The Thermal Energy Storage Section of the discussion draft is quite brief and

your testimony seems to focus on the need for a great deal of research and development into the area of thermal energy storage. What elements do you feel

should be addressed in a thermal energy storage research and development program?

A17. As to the elements that should be addressed in a thermal research and development program, the key is that the market related to this technology responds to

demonstrated solutions. Therefore, even existing technology concepts could be more

78

rapidly accepted as economically feasible if there was a commercial demonstration,

and one that exhibited favorable cost, environmental and reliability features. Studies and lab validations are an essential first step. However, to attract the kind of

up-front capital needed for a commercial project, a significant demonstration with

an ongoing field operation may prove necessary to satisfy investors.

Q18. Are you supportive of a check off program for solar energy as included in the

discussion draft? Would ASP be a participant?

A18. My understanding is the term ‘‘check-off program’’ relates to a program for

solar education and promotion that would apply to manufacturers and importers of

solar products. Whether APS would be a subject to such a check-off program will

depend on a variety of factors, therefore we would seek clarification of how the program could apply to a utility that could be working with solar products.

Q19. You mention the use of federal land for locating large scale CSP. What environmental, including siting concerns, do you see being faced by such a project?

2,500 contiguous acres of land is how big of an area? Can you give me a frame

of reference?

A19. In regards to the reference to 2,500 acres of land, consider that a square mile ‘‘section’’ of land is 640 acres. The 2,500 acre suggestion would be about four square

miles, and could accommodate sufficient CSP facilities for the generation of approximately 500 MW of power. The factors that would have to be considered as part of

a site selection would be an Environmental Impact Statement, consideration of impacts on adjoining property uses, the available natural resources, zoning restrictions, taxes, etc.

Q20. You’ve testified that CSP is ‘‘the most cost effective solar technology’’ and the

one that has the ‘‘greatest potential to compete economically’’ with conventional

generation. What are the relative costs between CSP and conventional generation? Could you elaborate on the figures you are using? Follow up—You have

testified in favor of a long-term extension of the 30 percent Investment tax credit (ITC). How long is ‘‘long-term’’ in your mind? And as you’ve said the potential for CSP to be competitive is so great, would it be so without the ITC in

place.

A20. Projects with commercially demonstrated CSP technologies are being offered

at less than twice the cost of conventional generation, sometimes significantly less,

but not quite competitive with conventional generation. These current project costs

are dependent on the 30 percent ITC, currently available to third-party owners. The

ITC reduces the cost sufficiently to make large scale CSP attractive to many utilities. If the ITC is not extended, we believe large scale CSP plants will be simply

too expensive and will not be constructed in the foreseeable future. Large scale CSP

plants take a minimum of three to five years to site, permit and construct. Consequently, the ITC should be extended for a minimum of five years, but ten years

would be preferable. We believe that ten years would be sufficient to generate numerous projects resulting in greatly reduced costs and a sustainable industry, independent of tax credits.

Q21. Would you favor extending the 30 percent ITC to public utilities? If it were to

be extended to these entities, would it make sense to place greater costs for research, training, land use and environmental concerns and the overall promotion of solar power on these public utilities?

A21. Generally, we favor the use of a meaningful ITC program as an incentive to

public utilities for the investment in renewable energy facilities such as CSP. However, an ITC has to be carefully weighed by an organization contemplating using

the ITC to see if its operations qualify, and whether the conditions on the ITC can

be met.

Q22. Mr. Hayden, you mention in your testimony that one of the main issues with

solar and wind energy is their intermittency. You suggest that we need more

R&D into the area of storage. Are the storage issues different between wind and

solar energy? Should we focus our energies on storage for stationary applications generally so that we could use the research for more than just solar technologies? Without adequate storage technology, how much growth can reasonably be expected in the solar energy market?

A22. Wind and solar energy definitely have different storage issues in terms of

availability and compatibility with current technologies. Wind energy technologies

and the various kinds of solar energy technologies would integrate differently with

the known available storage technologies, such as thermal, compressed air, pumped

79

hydro, and batteries. For example, any source of electric energy could be used to

drive the compressor of a compressed air storage system, or to pump water for a

hydro-storage system, which stores the energy for later use. However, since the CSP

systems use thermal processes, they have a unique opportunity to use thermal storage more directly by storing solar heat before it is used to make electricity.

In summary, a broad support of stationary storage solutions in conjunction with

the development of CSP resources is a good idea, and thermal storage technology

is particularly well associated with current CSP plans. Without some means of addressing the availability of intermittent renewable energy sources, and providing incentives such as ITC and rate recovery, public utilities like APS will continue to find

it difficult to expand solar energy in its energy mix. APS regards all of these issues

as important to the further development of renewable energy resources and without

some changes in these areas, electric utilities will continue to primarily rely upon

traditional energy resources to meet their customer needs and protect existing infrastructure.

80

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Rhone Resch, President, Solar Energy Industries Association

The Solar Energy Industries Association thanks the Subcommittee for the opportunity to testify and to provide written responses to questions asked by the Committee Ranking Member. On the questions pertaining to workforce training, we

would defer to those expert witnesses who appeared before the Subcommittee to testify specifically on the workforce provisions in the discussion draft. Should you have

additional questions either relating to or independent of the responses below, please

do not hesitate to contact our offices at your convenience.

Questions submitted by Representative Ralph M. Hall

Q1. Have you reviewed the legislation being proposed here today? Do you think it

makes sense to create two additional layers of bureaucracy for the Secretary of

Energy to promote solar power or do you feel it would be easier to just give DOE

a grant to promote solar power? Please explain.

A1. SEIA reviewed the discussion draft prior to the hearing and has since had the

opportunity to review the provisions that were passed out of the Committee. Based

on our reading of the draft, the primary composition of the Board, and the direction

it is to provide, will come from industry. The participation of the Secretary of Energy on the Board seems appropriate, given the large role the DOE plays in the development of solar technologies, but it seems clear that the solar industry will (appropriately) remain the lead agent in disseminating information about solar products.

Q2. Do you think solar power needs to be promoted in order to be successful as an

energy resource?

A2. Solar power, particularly in the distribution generation model, requires increased consumer awareness in order to achieve greater deployment. As we have

stated in written testimony to the Committee,

Though growing exponentially and constantly innovating, the U.S. solar industry is still in a nascent period. . .solar [photovoltaics] provides less than 1/30th

of one percent of the current U.S. electricity supply. Furthermore, PV is primarily a distributed generation technology that is installed on the rooftops of

homes and businesses throughout the U.S.—a paradigm shift from the traditional model of centralized electricity generation. Most solar installation companies are small businesses, typically employing no more than a few dozen people,

and lacking the budget to reach a broad swath of consumers.

Thus, even as consumers embrace the idea of solar power, they are usually not

fully aware of its capabilities and they have misconceptions about how a solar

energy system works in a home. Market reports demonstrate a lack of consumer

understanding that solar electricity operates just like regular electricity and is

the same kind of electricity that a local utility company provides. 29 percent of

respondents to the May 2007 Roper survey were not aware that solar energy

can power common electric devices like computers or appliances. A number of

common myths persist about modern solar technology, such as the belief that

solar will not work in places outside of the Sunbelt or that solar devices require

more energy to manufacture than they produce in their lifetime, and these

myths often inhibit consumer consideration of solar as a viable energy source.

Furthermore, consumers lack information on how to find solar companies or

what solar products might be available. On a daily basis, the most common

phone calls to SEIA come from consumers who ask, ‘‘Where can I find solar for

my home?’’ The industry has taken a number of steps to centralize this type

of information, including the development of a national solar installer directory,

Findsolar.com. Individually, several companies have undertaken consumer

awareness campaigns that focus on basic technology education. Yet these efforts

clearly do not equate to the potential reach of a national consumer awareness

campaign.

Therefore, we believe that a national campaign promoting solar energy would significantly increase solar’s market growth.

Q3. Do you support the language in the bill that requires private companies to open

their books and records to Members of the Board for inspection? The language

of the bill provides for criminal penalties for release of information obtained

81

under the authority of the Act to ‘‘any agency or officer of the United States for

any purpose other than implementation of this Act.’’ What information do you

believe this language is seeking to protect? Do you agree criminal penalties are

necessary?

A3. All corporations have confidential business information that must be safeguarded in order to encourage companies to do business in the U.S. The relevant

provisions of this discussion draft are designed to facilitate the collection of market

data for purposes of levying assessments on producers, while safeguarding data

from dilatory or improper use. We perceive that this approach borrows largely from

the legislation used to create other industry check-off programs and would welcome

a continuing dialogue on how best to achieve effective reporting and compliance.

Q4. The language of section 9 requires the continuation of the solar promotion board

and committee should be contingent upon a vote by the manufacturers and importers. Would you support a referendum prior to creation of the Board and

Committee? Why or why not?

A4. SETA would be open to a referendum prior to the creation of the Board and

Committee. Furthermore, it is our understanding that the industry would have the

power to periodically evaluate the effectiveness of the program, with a focus on its

economic benefits to industry members. This is appropriate given that then solar

check-off program is funded by a tax that is established by the industry, with the

blessing of members of the industry, and for the benefit of the industry as well as

the general public.

Q5. What enforcement by the Secretary of Energy do you envision that might warrant a civil penalty for noncompliance under section 10 of this bill? Is this section necessary?

A5. In studying existing check-off programs, it appears common that enforcement

powers are granted to eliminate the problem of ‘‘free riders,’’ or nonpaying companies that might otherwise benefit economically from programs that others have

funded. Without enforcement provisions, programs would be less likely to ensure

that all companies participate.

Q6. What type of investigation do you believe it would be necessary for the Secretary

of Energy to conduct under Section 11 of this bill?

A6. Most likely, any such investigations would be pursuant to issues of compliance

with the assessment process.

Q7. How will your organization benefit from this legislation?

A7. SETA is a 501(c)(6) non-profit association that works to make solar power a

mainstream and significant component of the U.S. energy supply. As the discussion

draft currently provides, SETA would be able to serve on the promotion board and

play a role in designing and implementing a national consumer awareness campaign. In doing so, SEIA would address one of its core functions: to educate consumers on the benefits of solar technologies.

Q8. What kind of yearly revenues does the solar industry have which could be used

in a promotion program as envisioned by the legislation?

A8. Globally, the solar photovoltaic industry manufactured 2.2 Gigawatts of product

in 2006. The U.S., with seven percent market share, manufactured PV products

worth slightly more than $1 billion, with a net export of 10 percent of product.

Q9. Where does each of you see solar power as a part of the Nation’s energy mix by

2015 by percentage if this bill is enacted?

A9. As stated in SEIA’s testimony, a check-off program will only succeed if appropriate incentives are in place, including an eight-year extension of the federal investment tax credits (ITC). Over the past decade, due to a lack of progressive national policy, the U.S. has lost global leadership in the race to attract solar energy

manufacturing, installation, and jobs. Long-term demand-side incentive policies in

Japan and Europe have spurred the formation of hundreds of new companies and

tens of thousands of new solar industry jobs in those countries; Germany, with the

solar resources of Anchorage, AK, installs eight times more PV each year than the

entire U.S. With appropriately designed incentive policies and increased consumer

awareness, we anticipate that solar power could provide 10–15 percent of new incremental generating capacity annually in the U.S. by 2015.

Q10. I note that, as indicated in Section 2(7), the program is generally intended to

improve the ‘‘competitive position. . .of solar energy products in the marketVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:06 Dec 20, 2007 Jkt 036001 PO 00000 Frm 00085 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E07\061907\36001 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
82

place.’’ Because the program includes importers, apparently this means promoting all solar products (including German) against other technologies. Does

this matter to American producers?

A10. We anticipate that U.S. companies would, by far and away, benefit the most

from a strong demand signal in the U.S. market. One of the realities of solar commerce is that companies generally prefer to manufacture high-tech products close

to where the markets are, rather than ship them overseas and go through an extensive distribution system. In Germany, a national feed-in tariff incentive program for

solar PV has helped to industrialize some of that country’s most economically depressed regions. In the U.S., the states with the best-designed and long-term incentive programs have attracted the most development. Thus, in the current race for

global solar energy leadership, increasing consumers’ awareness and demand for

solar is one of the optimal methods for growing the U.S. industry.

Q11. Has the SEIA tried to do a voluntary check-off program?

A11. SEIA has not tried to implement a voluntary check-off program. In formulating our testimony on the discussion draft, we looked at other industries that had

implemented check-off programs. Historical examination shows that industries have

indeed organized voluntary check-offs, but they account for only a small share of all

funding for generic efforts. It seems likely that the establishment of legislative authority helps ensure the efficacy of check-off programs. This authority facilitates the

practicalities of dealing in interstate commerce and, as mentioned above, helps to

eliminate the problem of ‘‘free riders,’’ or nonpaying companies that might otherwise

benefit economically from programs that others have funded.

Q12. In your testimony, you talk mostly about distributed generation technologies of

solar energy. Do you see more of a potential for solar energy on this smaller

scale or as a large solar power plant?

A12. We believe that there is a vital role both for distributed solar generation and

for concentrating solar power (CSP) in the U.S. energy portfolio. Both PV and CSP

provide high-value electricity during peak demand hours, from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M.

on hot, sunny days, thus helping to conserve the use of valuable natural gas. The

Western Governors’ Association Solar Task Force recently identified 200 GW of

prime potential sites for CSP in the Southwest, including several sites in Texas.

Furthermore, a study by Navigant Consulting found that eligible rooftop space in

the U.S. could provide 700 GW of PV. We encourage the greater use of CSP and

PV alike.

Q13. How many members does the SEIA have? How many member organizations I

companies would benefit from additional funding for research? How many

member organizations/companies would not?

A13. SEIA represents over 550 companies involved in the U.S. solar energy industry. Through our weekly newsletters and alerts, we actively encourage our members

to participate in collaborative R&D efforts with the Department of Energy under the

President’s Solar America Initiative, announced by the White House in the 2006

State of the Union and first funded in FY 2007. The DOE Solar Energy Technologies Program has, at the time of this writing, announced two rounds of funding

awards. The recipients are consortia of industry (usually several companies per

award), national laboratories, universities, and non-profits. While it would be imprecise to guess how many companies would benefit from future research funding, we

anticipate that such funding would continue to be directed towards collaborative research teams incorporating companies from throughout the solar value chain.

83

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Jane M. Weissman, Executive Director, Interstate Renewable Energy

Council; Vice Chair, North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners

Questions submitted by Representative Ralph M. Hall

Q1a. Are you familiar with the Institute for Sustainable Power?

A1a. Yes.

The Institute for Sustainable Power’s (ISP) accreditation and certification programs began 1996. International renewable energy, education, training, and accreditation experts worked to create ISPQ Standard #01021, which provides the guidelines and sets the bar for the accreditation of training programs and the certification

of trainers in the renewable energy field. The objectives of the Standard are:

• to provide training programs worldwide with a harmonized training contentand delivery-guide for the knowledge and skills competencies for renewable

energy workforces;

• to increase the confidence level that industry, employers, consumers, financiers, and governments can have in the participating training programs

and trainers by providing a globally accepted process of evaluation and surveillance (audit and periodic re-evaluation) of training programs and trainers,

and periodic re-evaluation of the standards; and

• to encourage safety and the training of safe practices within the industry.

In 2005, ISP decentralized operations and created licensees for operations in the

United States, the UK and the Asia-Pacific area.

As of July 2005, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) is the North

American Licensee for the Institute for Sustainable Power’s Quality (ISPQ) International Standard #01021 for Renewable Energy Training Accreditation and Instructor Certification programs. IREC is responsible for the full accreditation and

certification cycle including processing applications, assigning registered auditors,

awarding the credential, and maintaining all records of applicants, candidates and

certificants.

IREC awards formal recognition for five (5) ISPQ designations:

1. Accreditation for Training Programs

2. Accreditation for Continuing Education Providers

3. Certification for Independent Master Trainers

4. Certification for Affiliated Master Trainers

5. Certification for Instructors

Using the ISPQ International Standard #01021 as a guide, with an approved Task

Analysis as the content standard, IREC’s ISPQ-Registered Auditors evaluate candidates for accreditation and certification through a desk and/or on-site audit. The

Auditors prepare the results of their evaluation and report to the IREC ISPQ Award

Committee which is responsible for the final decision on training accreditation and

trainer certification.

Two attached documents demonstrate the rigor and depth of the ISPQ process:

Standard #01021 and the Candidate Handbook. For further information, please visit

www.isaausa org.

Q1b. Do you feel comfortable having them run a certification program?

A1b. Yes. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council has been working for over two

decades as a non-profit organization committed to moving renewable energy resources into the marketplace. IREC emphasizes education and outreach, stakeholder

coordination, technical assistance, workforce development, the adoption and implementation of uniform guidelines and standards, and consumer protection. IREC is

known for its ability to identify critical issues, build networks, and develop and disseminate information tools that make the work of solar energy stakeholders more

effective. The Council has a proven track record for producing material and products

with the highest professional standards, meeting deadlines and managing its operations efficiently and effectively. (www.irecusa.org)

IREC’s Accreditation and Certification Programs receive counsel and oversight

from a national, 10-person advisory board which includes trainers, industry, and

credentialing and education experts.

84

Q1c. What type of fee would you envision would be required for them to ‘‘certify’’

workforce training programs?

A1c. To date, below is the current fee application and maintenance fee structure.

The fees are purposely kept low. In this early stage of operation, the fee structure

does not support the full management and administration of the ISPQ process.

Q2. How will your organization benefit from this legislation?

A2. IREC’s goal is a simple one—to guarantee quality training for the solar energy

practitioner. The ISPQ process is a rigorous one and there has been considerable

resources spent to make this credentialing process fair, based on industry-developed

standards, and provide non bias, third-party assessment of training programs. All

documents and procedures have received subject-matter expert and legal review. We

would like to see this legislation encourage the ISPQ assessment process but our

goal is to make sure that there is assessable, quality training available for solar energy installers.

Q3. What is your view of cost sharing of the training programs between the states

and Federal Government?

A3. When possible, IREC encourages cost sharing especially for states with System

Benefit Funds. However, we do not think that states without these funding resources should be penalized. We recommend that cost sharing is encouraged but not

required.

Q4. Are the unions opposed to the training provisions in the bill?

A4. We have not had any direct conversations with the unions in regard to this bill.

However, the National Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee (NJATC) supports ISPQ goals and its mission, and intends to facilitate voluntary JATC participation in the ISPQ framework. NJATC is presently seeking Accredited Training

Program status under ISPQ for Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Systems. The scope of this

accreditation will cover the new NJATC Solar PV System curriculum, its ITC facilities in Alcoa, TN, NJATC instructors, its program administrative policies and

courses offered by NJATC. We would be happy to provide contact information to the

NJATC.

85

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Joseph T. Sarubbi, Professor/Department Chair, Building Systems

Technology Department, Hudson Valley Community College

Questions submitted by Representative Ralph M. Hall

Q1a. Are You familiar with the Institute for Sustainable Power?

A1a. Yes.

Q1b. Do you feel comfortable having them run a certification program?

A1b. Yes. The Institute for Sustainable Power has worked hard to ensure that companies, installers, and training institutions meet rigorous standards that will make

certain the type of reliability needed for positive industry growth and consumer confidence. I have intimate knowledge of ISP’s standards and believe they do well to

manage quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC).

Q1c. What type of fee would you envision would be required for them to ‘‘certify’’

workforce training programs?

A1c. An exact figure is difficult for me to ascertain. To ensure that all institutions

applying for accreditation meet ISP standards a site visit to the institution seeking

accreditation by the ISP evaluation team is essential. In Hudson Valley Community

College’s situation, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority provided the resources to allow the College to position itself for Accreditation.

National sponsorship of ISP could reduce the costs associated with institutional accreditation and help these institutions move swiftly, yet responsibly, towards accreditation. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) developed a fee structure

for evaluation of solar programs and institutions seeking accreditation, and Hudson

Valley Community College is working within these fee guidelines. I am confident

in IREC’s ability to manage the costs associated with accreditation and certification.

Q2a. Have you reviewed the legislation proposed here today?

A2a. Yes.

Q2b. Do you think it makes sense to create two additional layers of bureaucracy for

the Secretary of Energy to promote solar power or do you feel it would be easier

to just give DOE a grant to promote solar power? Please explain.

A2b. The Solar Energy Industries Research and Promotion Board, as well as the

Solar Energy Industries Research and Promotion Operating Committee make sense

in that they will be strong advocates for the advancement of the solar industry. The

members of the Board, as well as the Committee, will be stakeholders in the solar

industry and will provide a platform for sound solar energy initiatives. While an argument could certainly be made that we are creating more levels of bureaucracy,

in this case, I believe the layers are valid; especially knowing that (1) no Board and

Committee members will receive compensation for their service, and (2) most, if not

all, Board and/or Committee members will be utilizing the resources, staffs, and facilities of existing organizations.

Q3. Do you believe solar power needs to be promoted in order to be successful as an

energy resource?

A3. Yes. There is a certain level of complacency that exists in our society and I’ve

learned throughout the years that an effectively promoted initiative has positive

outcomes. There are many examples to point to, some of which were identified during the hearing. I truly believe that an educated public is our strongest asset and

right now I don’t believe that the Nation yet fully understands the value of investing in solar power, especially the younger generation. The same could be said for

other renewable energy resources.

Q4. Do you support the language in the bill that requires private companies to open

their books and records to Members of the Board for inspection?

A4. I don’t have the expertise to adequately answer this question.

Q5. The language of this bill provides for criminal penalties for release of information obtained under the authority of the Act to ‘‘any agency or officer of the

United States for any purpose other than the implementation of this act.’’ What

information do you believe this language is seeking to protect? Do you agree

criminal penalties are necessary?

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A5. Again, I believe I don’t have the expertise to adequately answer this question.

Q6. The language of section 9 requires the continuation of the solar promotion board

and committee should be contingent upon a vote by the manufacturers and importers. Would you support a referendum prior to creation of the Board and

Committee? Why or why not?

A6. Again, I believe I don’t have the expertise to adequately answer this question.

Q7. What enforcement by the Secretary of Energy do you envision that might warrant civil penalty for noncompliance under section 10 of this bill? Is this section

necessary?

A7. Again, I believe I don’t have the expertise to adequately answer this question.

Q8. What type of investigation do you believe it would necessary for the Secretary

of Energy to conduct under section 11 of this bill?

A8. Again, I believe I don’t have the expertise to adequately answer this question.

Q9. How will your organization benefit from this bill?

A9. Hudson Valley Community College received a grant from the New York State

Energy Research and Development Authority to establish our solar program. As a

leader in solar training Hudson Valley Community College will be able to seek additional resources to develop new solar training programs that are responsive to the

industry, as well as expand our existing program offerings. As the solar industry

grows, Hudson Valley Community College would seek additional funding for solar

programmatic initiatives which include resources for additional faculty, curriculum

development, and enhanced training facilities to react to industry trends.

Q10. What kind of yearly revenues does the solar industry have which could be used

in a promotion program as envisioned by the legislation?

A10. Again, I believe I don’t have the expertise to adequately answer this question.

Q11. Where does each of you see solar power as a part of the Nation’s energy mix

by 2015 by percentage if this bill is enacted?

A11. This bill will go a long way towards making the United States a national player in the solar power generation industry, and inform the world that we are serious

about renewable energy.

Q12. What is your view on cost sharing of the training programs between the states

and Federal Government?

A12. Again, I believe I don’t have the expertise to adequately answer this question.

Q13. Are the unions opposed to this training bill?

A13. Quite the contrary. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, for

example, is very invested in training their journeyman in solar installation technology. They see economic growth and job creation with this bill. One only has to

look at New York City’s ‘‘Million solar roofs’’ initiative to see the impact on job creation as a valid example.

Q14. Is the draft discussion draft duplicative of any current programs? If so which

ones? What are the metrics that will evaluate success of the training or solar

programs?

A14. A handful of states, such as California, New Jersey, and New York, have solar

training initiatives that have proven track records, but the United States needs a

national program to ensure the type of growth that it aspires to reach by 2015. A

national program will ensure other states will have the opportunity to enhance job

creation in the solar industry.

Q15. Mr. Sarubbi, you have demonstrated that the photovoltaic program at your

community college is in high demand and has been able to seek out several

business partners. Does the Federal Government need to be involved to ‘‘spur’’

further collaborations?

A15. Absolutely! Our success was driven by a collaborative effort between a State

government agency, as well as national organizations such as IREC, with the resources and guidelines to establish an effective solar training program, and an educational institution with the vision to see the value of this training. The government

resources gave the college the confidence to move forward, which made attracting

support from local solar companies viable. Our growth is still contingent on procuring resources that would allow the College to expand its offerings and further

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develop partnerships. It’s all about confidence. Having the DOE as a sponsor of

solar training programs will spur confidence and ensure industry growth.

Q16. As your program has grown, have you had to advertise your services?

A16. Interestingly, the College has gained significantly in ‘‘free’’ advertisement as

news agencies continue to report on the success of our solar training programs, further spurring interest in the community. The ‘‘press’’ has helped us ‘‘get the word

out’’ and the College has been the beneficiary of this exposure. The College also

maintains a website link dedicated to solar training which continues to garner attention from those seeking information about gaining solar training.

Q17. What we’ve heard today from a number of experts that explain that solar technologies are rapidly changing and evolving. Do you offer a continuing education program to meet these changing demands?

A17. Absolutely! Hudson Valley Community College has a Workforce Development

Institute that seeks to continuously provide training to meet the needs of industry

and solar training is no different. For example, as state and local building and electrical codes change to adapt to the changing solar technology, the College provides

workshops for code inspectors to keep them abreast of these latest technological advances. The College is currently developing ‘‘advanced’’ solar training courses that

will be offered through Workforce Development to keep Certified Installers ‘‘fluid.’’

Q18. Has the Department of Energy assisted you in anyway? If so, how?

A18. At this stage I am not aware of any direct assistance from the Department

of Energy.

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ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Daniel E. Arvizu, Director, National Renewable Energy Laboratory,

U.S. Department of Energy

Questions submitted by Representative Ralph M. Hall

Q1. Are you familiar with the Institute of Sustainable Power? Do you feel comfortable having them run a certification program? What type of a fee would you

envision would be required for them to ‘‘certify’’ workforce training programs?

A1. I am familiar with the Institute for Sustainable Power which coordinates, develops, and maintains international standards for the evaluation and qualification of

renewable energy, energy efficiency and distributed generation training providers.

ISP has a solid reputation for the quality of the work it does. I am not in a position

to comment on an appropriate fee for certifying workforce training programs.

I would suggest, however, that the Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Program

be consulted on options for improving training and certification of solar energy professionals. As part of its Solar America Initiative, the DOE has created a program

to improve and expand solar installer training in cooperation with the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP). The DOE’s efforts in this

area may be of interest to the Committee.

Q2. Have you reviewed the legislation being proposed here today? Do you think it

makes sense to create two additional layers of bureaucracy for the Secretary of

Energy to promote solar power or do you feel it would be easier to just give DOE

a grant to promote solar power? Please explain.

A2. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q3. Do you think solar power needs to be promoted in order to be successful as an

energy resource?

A3. As Americans begin to enjoy more options as to where they get their power and

fuel, I believe they need clear, credible and consistent information about all energy

sources to help them make informed decisions about which options to choose.

Q4. Do you support the language in the bill that requires private companies to open

their books and records to Members of the Board for inspection?

A4. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q5. The language of the bill provides for criminal penalties for release of information obtained under the authority of the Act to ‘‘any agency or officer of the

United States for any purpose other than implementation of this Act.’’ What information do you believe this language is seeking to protect? Do you agree criminal penalties are necessary?

A5. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q6. The language of section 9 requires the continuation of the solar promotion board

and committee should be contingent upon a vote by the manufacturers and importers. Would you support a referendum prior to creation of the Board and

Committee? Why or why not?

A6. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q7. What enforcement by the Secretary of Energy do you envision that might warrant a civil penalty for noncompliance under section 10 of this bill? Is this section necessary?

A7. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q8. What type of investigation do you believe it would be necessary for the Secretary

of Energy to conduct under Section 11 of this bill?

A8. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q9. How will your organization benefit from this legislation?

A9. NREL will not directly benefit from this legislation.

Q10. What kind of yearly revenues does the solar industry have which could be used

in a promotion program as envisioned by the legislation?

A10. I will defer this question to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

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Q11. Where does each of you see solar power as a part of the Nation’s energy mix

by 2015 by percentage if this bill is enacted?

A11. This bill addresses, and in some cases expands on, a number of important

areas of solar energy research, development and demonstration currently sponsored

by the DOE. It identifies critical research on thermal storage for concentrating solar

power technologies that will make those technologies significantly more valuable to

utilities interested in integrating them within their system. It also calls for continuing studies of that integration with a particular focus on water issues critical

items for successful market penetration of CSP.

I would suggest that the DOE be consulted regarding the additional demonstration programs the bill mandates for daylighting, solar air conditioning, and

photovoltaics. The DOE is currently expanding its efforts on demonstration and deployment of distributed solar and building efficiency technologies, and I believe that

commercialization of these technologies will occur most rapidly if it is pursued within the context of the broader requirements and opportunities in the buildings sector.

Together, these various efforts will reinforce the DOE programs to move solar energy into position to make a significant contribution to the U.S. energy picture by

2015. The amount of solar power in our future energy mix will depend on a number

of factors, but supporting legislation can help accelerate the amount we have in

2015.

Q12. What is your view of cost sharing of the training programs between the states

and Federal Government?

A12. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q13. Are the unions opposed to the training provisions in the bill?

A13. NREL is not qualified to answer this question.

Q14. Is the Draft discussion draft duplicative of any current programs? If so which

ones? What are the metrics that will evaluate success of the training or solar

programs?

A14. I will defer to DOE on the first part of the question dealing with duplication

of current programs. As to metrics for evaluating the success of training and other

solar programs, the major metric for the Solar Program is the levelized cost of electricity. The attached slide presents the goal of the solar program to have competitive

prices of electricity in the three market sectors (residential, commercial, and utility)

by 2015. A secondary goal is to have about 4 gigawatts of installed solar power by

2015.

Q15. In your testimony you state that the ‘‘Solar Energy Program goal is to reduce

the cost of solar photovoltaic technologies so that they become cost competitive

with other sources of electricity in all major U.S. markets by 2015.’’ Are you

on track to reach this goal? What major hurdles would prevent you from doing

so?

A15. The current DOE Solar Program in photovoltaics is designed to make solar

electricity cost competitive in the three major markets—residential, commercial, and

utility—by 2015 through the President’s Solar American Initiative. This initiative

builds on the experience with bringing down the costs of solar electricity from successful programs in Japan and Europe. The program is currently on track to meet

these 2015 targets for the U.S. consumer. Technology investments and consistent

policies are both important, but to ensure success, to increase the technical leadership of the U.S. in this expanding high-technology business, and to build a solid

technical workforce in the U.S. economy, the investment in R&D both in the shortand long-term, must be strong, consistent and sustainable.

Q16. You mention that CSP power plants can be quickly constructed. How quickly

and how much do they cost to build? Are there any NIMBY issues involved

with their siting and construction?

A16. SolarGenix recently completed construction of a 64 MW plant near Las Vegas,

Nevada. Construction of the 64 MW plant took approximately one year to complete.

This matches previous experience in the late 80’slearly 90’s where nine CSP plants

were built in the Mojave Desert over a period of six years.

It is hard to predict NIMBY issues. CSP plants tend to be located in desert regions not ideal for residential development. However, as is the case in California,

concerns have risen over the development of CSP on sensitive habitats (e.g., Desert

Tortoise). As with other forms of conventional or renewable generation, construction

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of new transmission or upgrades of existing transmission can raise regional concerns.

Q17. Are there any CSP plants with thermal storage in operation today? Are any hybrid CSP/natural gas plants in operation? If not, when can we expect to see

them running?

A17. All of the existing nine parabolic trough plants operating in the Mojave Desert

are hybridized with natural gas, therefore supplying 100 percent of their rated capacity during peak utility periods. Two plants under construction in Spain (anticipated to be operational in 2008 and 2009) will use 6–7 hours of two-tank indirect

molten salt storage. However storage costs need to be reduced before such plants

would be considered economically competitive.

Q18. How does this legislation fit within the Administration’s energy initiatives? I

know that the Administration announced $168 million to help reduce the cost

of solar energy.

A18. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q19. Has the Administration done a cost estimate of the bill? Page 20 calls for an

unlimited authorization. What is your estimate?

A19. I will defer to DOE on this question.

Q20. Solar power has had problems with environmental concerns with toxic like cadmium used in some photovoltaic cells. Does CSP use cells that contain these

kinds of materials that might cause environmental concerns? Are there any environmental concerns as to land use, etc.?

A20. Concentrating Solar Power systems use thermal energy to drive an energy

conversion device (steam/gas turbine or Stirling engine) rather than solar cells. Heat

transfer fluids used by some systems can consist of synthetic oils or molten salts

can both be considered hazardous but have been widely used and permitted in commercial or demonstration plants in California. Land use can be a concern where

plants are being considered near sensitive habitat areas (e.g., the Desert Tortoise

in California’s Mojave Desert). Parabolic trough and power tower plants require

water for cooling (as with conventional generation) although dry cooling designs

have been studied and are being considered for future plants.

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Appendix 2:

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD

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