RENEWABLOG

The Word from WIREC: Day 1

Tuesday marked the first day of WIREC and it was an interesting start. Some observations:

-Kudos to the WIREC folks for doing a much better job than some other conferences at having an efficient registration system. At Solar Power 2007 in Long Beach, a colleague and I stood in line for more than 90 minutes for badge pick up (we pre-registered) and ended up missing a meeting as a result. WIREC knew the event would be well attended and they prepared accordingly. It took about four minutes to get our badge.

-While photovoltaic (PV) solar was the rage at Solar Power 2007, solar concentrators seem to be the most prevelant technology at WIREC. Sopogy, SkyFuel and Abengoa were a few of the concentrator companies exhibiting, albeit with slightly different strategies and target markets. Global Solar Energy was one of the major PV manufacturers present (*disclosure: GSE is a Schwartz client).

-Wind and solar are again the most dominant technologies on display in terms of commercially available products. Also well represented are biofuels, biomass and firms looking to service those companies (legal firms, government relations, etc.).

-Big kudos to ACORE for sponsoring a free lunch and again to the WIREC folks for having enough seating.

It'll be interesting to see if the traffic picks up a bit more tomorrow and to see what companies are saying regarding the ROI of exhibiting. There are obviously a lot of these events popping up around the country and abroad, and finite green marketing budgets need to know which events are worth the growing costs.