Orange County Register

They dotted the huge exhibition hall at the Anaheim Convention Center Tuesday, the first day of Solar Power International 2009 – what promoters call “America’s largest solar event.”

It is expected to draw more than 20,000 people from 90 countries by the time it wraps up Thursday. Wednesday is public night, when everyone is permitted to roam the exhibit hall free of charge.

The convention was kicked off Tuesday with speeches from actor and green activist Ed Begley Jr. and U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis — intended to get the crowd fired up about the economic potential of solar power.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a choice to make,” Solis told the conventioneers. “The United States can remain one of the world’s leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that allow us to become the world’s leading exporters of renewable energy.”

She mentioned the Obama administration’s greening efforts, including $80 billion in clean energy stimulus funding along with other funding intended train 168,000 solar-installation industry workers.

“We hope to ensure the energy efficiency market will thrive long after the Recovery Act money is spent,” she said.

Begley Jr. told of his devotion to all things green since 1970, when electric cars were hard to come by (though he still drove one), and of his wife’s quizzical attitude on his series, “Living with Ed,” which can be seen on Planet Green.

“We’re the only couple I know that has a prenup involving carbon credits,” he said.

Solis later took a tour of the 203,000-square-foot exhibition hall, where some 900 exhibitors are plying their wares.

Riding in a small motorized cart, Solis and her entourage stopped by a booth run by a German company, Reis Robotics, home of the big robots. They’re used to assemble solar panels. In fact, robots of various sizes were on display at the “business-to-business” conference, their makers hoping to encourage solar companies to install automated assembly systems.

Organizers say a number of foreign companies are at the convention, hoping to cash in on an expected solar bonanza in the United States.

“We hope it is growing up very fast,” said Steffen Gunther, sales manager for Reis. “We hope the booming is coming next year.”

Local companies also seem to be sensing a boom in the air.

“It’s been a little tentative over the past year,” said Ward Palmer of Chad Industries, Inc., of Anaheim, also selling robots at the convention.

“It does seem to be gaining momentum. The construction industry is picking up, and manufacturers have to get ahead of that curve. Everybody’s trying to make sure they have enough capacity.”

His robots, not much bigger than a sewing machine, are used to assemble the tiny solar cells that are later put together to form solar panels.

There will be plenty of other things to gawk at on public night. The huge curved mirror, for instance, on display at a booth run by Schott North America, Inc. The mirror curves around a tube filled with liquid, the product that Schott is there to sell.

The mirror focuses sunlight on the tube, and the liquid heats up to power steam generators, an alternative to coal or oil-fired power plants.

The conventioneers seemed mostly upbeat about their industry, noting growing interest and sales of solar power systems, new hiring by many solar companies, and the help provided by government stimulus funding.

That includes SolarCity, whic operates in Arizona, Oregon and California and has a warehouse in Santa Ana.

The company says it is the only one that leases solar-power systems to homeowners with no money down. That puts solar power arrays, which can otherwise cost in the neighborhood of $20,000, within financial reach for more people.

“We have over 4,500 customers now,” said Jonathan Bass, the company’s communications director. “Twenty-five hundred are lease customers.”

He said the company hired 19 people in Orange County over the past four months, for a total of 34 employees in O.C.

“We essentially doubled the work force,” he said.

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