President Obama is making good on his promise to fund and explore renewable energy and took the time out of his busy scheudle today to tour a solar-power facility at the Denver Museum of Nature and Sciences. Today, Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus package at the museum and the tour was to highlight his push for alternative energy. The Museum closed down today to host the historic event and will reopen to the public on Wednesday, February 18.

The museum’s rooftop solar photovoltaic system consists of 465 solar panels, generating a portion of the museum’s electrical power.

“What makes this recovery plan so important is not just that it will create or save three and a half million jobs over the next two years,” Obama told an audience of 300 elected officials and members of the ‘green energy’ community in attendance at the museum. “It’s that we are putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done in critical areas that have been neglected for too long –- work that will bring real and lasting change for generations to come.”

President Obama also addressed upgrading the country’s power grid and encouraging “green energy” businesses such as solar power companies.

If you’re thinking about installing solar panels, you might be pleased to hear that researchers in Australia are working on a project to develop a spray-on coating for solar panels, which will both bring down the cost and improve the efficiency of solar panels.

A new company, Spark Solar, is working in conjunction with Australian National University researchers on the spray-on method. The project is projected to be finished and available to consumers in 2011.

Dr Keith McIntosh from ANU, the chief investigator in the first project, stated, “It will provide an opportunity for significant manufacturing cost reductions by replacing the conventional, expensive manufacturing techniques that are currently employed industry-wide with the spray-on films.”

This dude is pretty impressed with his do-it-yourself cheap home solar panel system with lights. Check out the video as he takes you on a tour of his house, explaining how he installed this inexpensive solar power system (45 watts total). He got the cheap solar panels off Ebay and is thrilled to bits!

U.S. based Suntrof Systems LLC has just announced their new Alubond Solar Collectors and it sounds like the collectors could have a major impact on the solar power industry by reducing the cost of production by 50 percent.

Among the drawbacks of exploiting solar power are the high costs and the long time before the investment is recouped through energy savings. If the Alubond solar panels really do cut the cost of installing solar panels by half then this could be the boost the solar power industry needed.

According to Suntrof Systems LLC the Alubond solar panels don’t require heavy mirrors. They are exceptionally light and also offer a 20-year warranty on exterior performance.

If children out the future, then the folks over Sharp Electronics Corporation have the right idea. Employees from the company, a solar panel manufacturer, visited a New Jersey elementary school to to teach a lesson on climate change and renewable energy to a class of fifth graders.

Sharp began its Solar Academy program in the United States in October, teaching children about renewable energy.

Stewart Mitchell, the chief strategy officer for Sharp who began the program, believes that marketing to children just makes sense.

“The big picture is, you really want to try to tie your focus on social responsibility as a company into your business model,” Mitchell said. “The more that students learn about climate change, and the more they learn about the importance of renewable energy — it ties back to feeding into our business model of being in the solar business.”

Texas is the latest state to look to solar power, as legislators have announced they want Texas to be in the forefront for alternative energy sources. Plans for new legislation include incentives and rebates that would provide affordable solar panels. The hope is these incentives would spur a boom similar to the one that started with wind power a decade ago.

“We estimated that Texas could put solar panels on the equivalent of 500,000 rooftops in Texas over the next 10 years,” said Luke Metzger of Environment Texas. “That would create about 22,000 jobs and reduce as much pollution as taking 4.3 billion cars off the road for a year.”

Austin Energy, the state capital’s electric utility, recently announced that it wants to build one of the largest solar projects of its kind in the world. The goal is to power as many as 5,000 homes and allow Austin Energy to generate 30 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020.

File this one under ironic. The U.S. military is overseeing the installment of almost two dozen solar power projects in an attempt to mitigate Iraq’s energy crisis.

The country which was invaded by the U.S., which many people suggest was simply to get at oil there, is in an energy crisis and the U.S. is now helping them out of it via solar energy.

Among the problems plaguing Iraq a severe shortage of power is currently one of the most debilitating. The U.S. is providing assistance in the form of projects like the $165,000 solar panel installation at Baghdad’s Amariyah clinic. Previously the clinic would suffer power outages that would often interrupt treatment and surgery. Now the solar panels provide all the basic necessities of the clinic with a constant supply of solar energy.

The cost of fuel is currently quite high in Iraq. At current prices the value of the energy that the solar panels at the clinic provides amounts to $2 million USD over 25 years.

Like Masdar, this is just another example of how solar energy is being harnessed in a land known best for its oil.

Since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina (that bitch), New Orleans has had to rebuild much of itself from scratch. The upside of that reconstruction is that a large number of homes going up there are installing solar panels.

The solar panels seem to be part of a larger trend in New Orleans as organic farming is starting to get a foothold there and a new fleet of hybrid buses have hit the streets.

The cause for the green push in New Orleans is tough to pinpoint and is likely due to a few reasons including clean energy tax credits and just the momentum of the green movement. Not to mention that in 2007, New Orleans was named a ”Solar American City” by the U.S. Energy Department, which meant a $450,000 grant for the city to establish solar energy programs.

But things have definitely changed since the times when the French Quarter was overflowing with trash. Solar panels were practically non-existant before Katrina (that bitch). Now, in the lower 9th Ward, one of the areas devastated by the hurricane, approximately 20 homes have solar panels installed.

There is a greater interest in the local ecosystems that were devastated by the hurricane with tree planting projects currently underway and well as plans for bicycle lanes.

Spain made a massive push into the solar power industry last year. The Spanish solar energy market saw a 100% increase over 2007 with growth of 2,661 new megawatts of power. This inflated the global solar market such that last year the cost of solar panels was extremely high.

But with the a purchasing cap set at only 500 megawatts in Spain for this year, you can expect that plenty of solar panel manufacturers are going to be stuck with an oversupply issue. Couple that with the harsh realities of the current economic climate and it spells danger for those companies.

The upside, at least in the short term, is for those looking to buy solar panels in 2009. Prices along supply chains are reportedly being dropped by 20-40 percent.

Why do we care that a Gatorade factory has some solar panles? Because it’s one of the largest customer-owned solar power projects in all of Arizona. And also because this eco-friendly factory (oxymoron?) deserves some attention since even before the solar panel installastion it had already been awarded with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Gold-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

Not that the Gatorade facility is strictly in it for the environmental benefits. Installation costs of the solar panels were offset by the SRP Earthwise Solar program and of course the tax credits courtesy the state and federal governments.

This 500-kilowatt installation makes PepsiCo’s Gatorade the SRP’s largest EarthWise Solar Energy commercial customer.

for more information on the solar installation head over to Solar Buzz.