Over in the Palmetto State, solar panel inquiries are at an all-time high, due to rising electricity costs, according to local solar installers. One man just installed a 14.1-kilowatt system, the largest residential solar energy system in the state.

Georgia pecan grower Trey Pippin now harvests more than nuts—he’s also generating electricity from a one-acre solar farm on his property.

This past spring, 12 solar panels installed last year atop the Ypsilanti, Michigan, City Hall were wired to the building and began generating electricity. A group of volunteers from the Ypsilanti Food Co-operative and SolarYpsi installed the panels. They had won state grants to put solar panel on the Food Co-op, City Hall and the Co-op’s River Street Bakery.

Maine is sweetening the pot to try to get homeowners to make their homes more energy efficient this summer. The state is offering a $1,000 cash bonus for home energy improvements completed by August 31, 2010, according to the Morning Sentinel. The new incentive is in addition to the $3,000 cash incentive that has been in effect since January to homeowners of all income levels, as well as up to $1,500 in federal tax credits.

Homeowners are starting to go solar in the Quad Cities area encompassing parts of Illinois and Iowa across the Mississippi River from each other.

Recently, Oregon announced a new solar program in which utilities will pay premium rates to people for generating solar power with small-scale systems.

While oil continues to gush out of BP’s busted well in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana legislators are pushing at least three bills to help renewable energy, including solar power.

You might think of Washington and the Pacific Northwest as a bad place to put solar panels on your roof—but you’d be wrong.

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.

Down in the Sunshine State, Governor Charlie Crist plans to hold a special session of the state legislature to address the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to oil, he wants to focus on renewable energy policies, especially those that do not raise electricity rates or energy costs—including measures such as solar rebates and solar incentives.