2GreenEnergy at the Intersolar Show

I’m headed up to San Francisco to the Intersolar show tomorrow morning for a couple of days of meetings, and, of course, checking out the show itself.

I just realized that I’m entering my fourth decade of attending trade shows now.  I remember seeing a gawky kid with glasses at a show in the early 80s, and someone said, “Oh, that’s Bill Gates. He has a software company.  I wonder if it will go anywhere?” Since then, I can’t count how many events I’m traipsed through in Europe and North America, on some mission or another.

One thing I find interesting is what I call the “tone” of the show.  Of course, the promoters of all shows represent that theirs is the most exciting event in the universe — even in subject matter areas that most people find dull as dishwater.  But beneath the loud music and the flashing lights, I try to read the true feelings that underlie the show.

A good example is the auto shows, which I often attend to see the alternate fuel vehicles and to meet the people associated with them.  The car shows in Los Angeles and Detroit these last couple of years still have the glitz and the pretty girls — but there is something palpably wrong: people aren’t buying cars, and the OEMs are obviously scaling way back — on everything: promotions — even entire product annoucements. People still wear smiles — because it’s their job to do so — but you can almost hear them thinking, “Wow, this is terrible.”

It will be interesting to see what Intersolar is like.  Obviously, the solar industry is under some real pressure, with precipitous drops in PV prices with the attendent distressed margins, and a horrible environment for capital formation. Then you have what could be called the recalcitrance of the traditional energy industry. As I’ve often said, these fossil fuel people aren’t going away anytime soon — ecological disaster or no. I would think that this, combined with the overall economic climate, would tend to cast a kind of pallor over the place.

On the other hand, the solar thermal industry — far less mature than PV — boasts some terrific breakthroughs in technologies that are very interesting indeed.

We’ll see what happens — and what that “tone” will be like. I’ll update you on my travels. If you happen to be there and want to say hello, please hit “contact.”