Today President Obama is in the San Francisco area and will visit the Solyndra solar panel production factory in Fremont, California. Obama will discuss jobs and the economy while at Solyndra. In recent days he has said that the United States needs to boost its support of renewable energy sources, so that China doesn’t own the alternative energy market.

Arizona Cuts Solar Incentive Amount Because Program Is So Popular

Despite the down economy, demand for solar-power installations has been so large it threatened to drain Arizona’s solar rebate fund by June. So the Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) moved to reduce the amount of each rebate, in order to make the fund last longer and to provide solar incentives to more people. More APS home and business customers put solar panels on their roofs last year than in the previous eight years combined, and about 113 residential customers a week have applied for solar rebates from the utility this year, according to the Arizona Republic. The APS has proposed cutting its solar rebate from $3,000 per kilowatt to $2,150 a kilowatt.

The outlook for solar power in California just got sunnier. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation February 26 that raises the cap on the amount of customer-generated solar power utilities must reimburse through net-metering credits. Net-metering allows homes and businesses to receive credits if they generate more solar power than they can use. In effect, the customer sells the excess power to the electric grid and gets credit for it.