PV America – Part 2 – Solar Electric Power Assoc President/CEO Julia Hamm

At this weeks PV America show in San Jose CA we caught up with SEPA CEO Julia Hamm for a discussion of the state of the solar power industry and where she thinks things are going in this alternative energy business. While price drops in the last year have certainly sparked a great deal of interest in solar projects there are still hurdles to overcome for wide spread solar development. Ms Hamm addresses some of those issues in our discussion.

The Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to helping utilities integrate solar power into their energy portfolios for the benefit of the utility, its customers and the public good.

Julia Hamm bio:
Julia Hamm is the president and CEO of the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA), a national non-profit that helps its utility members make smart solar decisions. Julia has strong relationships with individuals at utilities and solar companies worldwide, and is knowledgeable about solar programs, policies, barriers, and trends. She is a frequent speaker at regional, national and international conferences and has authored numerous articles on solar trends and utility solar programs. Prior to leading SEPA, Julia worked as a senior associate at ICF International where she supported the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with implementation of its ENERGY STAR program. In 2007 she was named one of the Top 10 Women in Cleantech by earth2tech, and she holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Management from Cornell University.

Excerpt from her keynote speech at PV America 2012:

San Jose, CA – 20 years ago in 1992 a new organization was unveiled to accelerate the use of PV. The founding organizations included 13 U.S. electric utilities, the utility trade associations, and Electric Power Research Institute. This new organization, the Utility Photovoltaic Group, is what you now know today as the Solar Electric Power Association, or SEPA. In the press release announcing the organization’s formation, the founding board chair said “The utility industry has embarked on a new era to commercialize electricity from the sun.”

The initial focus was on utility applications that were economically competitive at that time, namely smaller-scale and remote applications where conventional power lines could be avoided, such as water pumping. The market potential for these applications in the U.S. was estimated at the time to be approximately 100 MW.

In 1992, there was less than 5 MW of grid-connected PV. Here we stand today in 2012 with more 3600 MW, more than 1/3 of which was installed in 2011 alone. Exponential growth seems to continue unabated.
So what has changed in the past 20 years and where is the utility industry today in its journey towards “commercializing electricity from the sun”?

From the outset, SEPA recognized that many utilities and their customers lacked exposure or were skeptical about the potential of PV. In response, in 1994, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, SEPA initiated the Technology Experience to Accelerate Markets in Utility Photovoltaics, or TEAM-UP, program. DOE funding for the program totaled almost $15 million, and was matched by industry cost-share of over $60 million. 35 venture teams were part of the program and installed more than 1,100 PV systems, totaling 7.2 megawatts. I’m sure many of you will be surprised to hear that SEPA, through this one program, approximately doubled the installed PV in the U.S. at the time.

You can find the text of her keynote speech at this years’ PV America show here.

Read more at AlternativeEnergyHQ