RENEWABLOG

Quick Hits from PVSEC

iHola from Valencia!

A few first impressions of the city and the conference:

-Having never been here I was expecting a dry, hot Mediterranean climate not unlike California. What I learned is that it is much more variable with my first night feeling like Miami in July. It is still an amazing place and the New Englander in me was a bit nostalgic once I felt the humidity.

-This is an amazing place of "old meets new." There are plenty of buildings and landmarks older than the US itself, but also some amazing modern architecture, including the Arts and Sciences buildings across from where I am staying.

-I was a bit concerned because everything that I had heard about Valencia was that it was not a tourist destination and therefore, people were not as friendly to foreigners as other cities and the percentage of English speakers was quite small. That did not bode well for my high school Spanish 101 capabilities.  It has turned out to be the exact opposite. The city is amazingly accomodating to visitors, there are many English-speaking natives and the people are very friendly. Good thing for me because I would be walking the thin line of playing the "Ugly American Flack." Valencia needs better PR as Spain's third-largest city....think of Chicago's international reputation versus NY and LA.

-The PVSEC conference is a melting pot of companies, much more so than a high-tech conference. There are companies from seemingly every country and the cultural differences are somewhat on display in their booths, with different types of designs, marketing slogans and promotional items. Countries I saw represented include the obvious, like the US, Germany, Spain, Japan and China. Also represented were Thailand, Canada, France, Italy, Belgium and Nigeria. That's at least four continents I saw represented without specifically looking for companies from South America and Australia, and I would be shocked if there were not at least one from each. Think a VC would fund my solar start up in Antartica? One word: monopoly.

-I spoke to a lot of people about the solar climate in the US and most are disappointed with the amount of support being given to solar by the federal government. They see no reason why the US should not be leading in renewables. How do you say, "preaching to the choir" in Spanish? They are not confident that making the ITCs retroactive (if not extended) would have much impact. I still think that companies that continue to invest during this bump in the road will come out on the other side much stronger than the competition.

-From a cleantech PR standpoint, it did not seem as though there was a lot of news from the show, nor was there much media walking around the convention hall. A majority of the people manning booths were salespeople and engineers, with a small smattering of marketing people mixed in.

-A quick Google News search confirms my last point. There are only 19 original articles that pop up when you search for "PVSEC" with an increase to 53 when you expand out the full spelling of the conference name. I am not sure if this is because of a lack of announcements or the scant physical media coverage at the event. It may be worth moving the event to another city next year that is closer to the European media centers, especially if travel costs remain high. The good news for the cleantech marketer and PR professional is that it is not nearly as noisy as other events, so there is a fairly decent chance of getting some attention at PVSEC.

-One of the most interesting early conversations I had was with a director of the EPIA. The European Photovoltaic Industry Association is pretty well organized and is very much taking a coopetition approach to the market. They anounced some staggering figures this week that say that solar could employ 10 million people by 2030 and power 4 billion people. That is a lot of green collar jobs.

That's all for now. Off to attend sessions and meet with more folks.

Adios!

Posted by Jason Morris on September 4, 2008 at 4:09 AM
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