Intersolar North America and SolarTech Expand Partnership

SAN FRANCISCO, July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Intersolar North America, the premier exhibition for solar professionals to exchange information and develop business opportunities in the U.S. solar market, and SolarTech, provider of innovative expertise to accelerate local solar markets, today announced an expanded partnership for the 2010 Intersolar North America conference. SolarTech will now provide an additional program offering at the conference taking place in San Francisco July 13-15, 2010, with additional reciprocal elements between both organizations extending into 2011. This partnership expansion will further contribute to the acceleration of the industry led market transformation work in California.

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SolarTech and Intersolar North America began their close partnership in 2009. By extending this relationship through 2011, it affords both organizations the opportunity to increase the critical work needed to accelerate the development of performance standards and best practices through SolarTech's Performance Symposium, to be held on Monday, July 12 at Intersolar North America. SolarTech will also showcase the development of the industry's first "Solar Commercialization Methodology" during the Accelerating PV Commercialization track on Wednesday, July 14. This track will focus on increasing the speed of bringing innovation to market, across all parts of the value chain, driving transformation to a clean economy, and creating jobs. Additionally, SolarTech and partners will highlight the real impact of solar industry's job creation opportunities against the current backdrop of challenges to California's AB32 implementation laws.

"The deepening of our existing relationship with Intersolar further solidifies our organization's position as one of the industry's leading standards and best practices development organization in the downstream part of the value chain. This agreement provides increased capabilities to disseminate the results of our work while ensuring industry stakeholders have a forum to provide feedback annually on critical issues," said Doug Payne, Executive Director of SolarTech. "It gives us direct access to leverage lessons from European and International markets into the California market, which complement our work to better inform our mission to deliver highly scalable industry tools across our core initiatives for local, state, and national adoption."

"Our important partnership with SolarTech is aligned with our goal of offering attendees information about best practices in all parts of the international solar market," said Markus Elsaesser, CEO Solar Promotion International GmbH. "Intersolar North America's partnerships are designed to help solar professionals and companies at all stages of growth secure the best resources and processes across the entire international solar industry."

"We look forward to the in-depth perspective that SolarTech will bring to the conference this year and feel it is a great value-add for our attendees. Their work is important to the quickening of solar technology implementation in California and we are pleased to help further that message," said Klaus W. Seilnacht, CEO of Freiburg Management and Marketing International.

About SolarTech

SolarTech provides innovative expertise to accelerate local solar markets. Since 2006, SolarTech has been developing standards and best practices, working collaboratively to integrate programs across six key solar market development areas: Permitting, Installation, Performance, Workforce, Interconnection, and Finance. In 2009, SolarTech reached over 6000 industry professionals as the only organization facilitating integrated, private/public collaboration through annual Summits and Symposiums on these core six initiatives.

About Intersolar

With over 2,600 exhibitors and 90,000+ visitors spanning three continents, Intersolar is the world's leading exhibition-series for the solar industry.

Intersolar North America takes place annually in San Francisco's Moscone Center West Hall. Since its establishment in 2008, the exhibition and conference have developed into the premier platform for the solar industry in North America. Intersolar North America focuses on photovoltaics and solar thermal technology and has quickly established itself among manufacturers, suppliers, wholesalers and service providers as an international industry meeting point. More than 575 international exhibitors, 20,000 trade visitors and 1,600 conference participants are expected to attend in 2010.

Intersolar's storied history of international exhibitions and conferences spans almost 20 years. Taking place in addition to Intersolar North America are Intersolar India, taking place in Mumbai from 2010, and Intersolar China in Shanghai, launching in 2011. The world's largest exhibition for the solar industry is Intersolar Europe in Munich.

The organizers of Intersolar Europe are Solar Promotion GmbH, Pforzheim and Freiburg WirtschaftTouristik und Messe GmbH & Co. KG. The exhibitions in North America, India and China are organized by the international subsidiaries Solar Promotion International GmbH, Pforzheim and Freiburg Management and Marketing International GmbH (FMMI).

For more information on Intersolar North America please visit: http://www.intersolar.us/

SOURCE Intersolar North America