Here at Solar Power International, a conference and trade show that has attracted about 27,000 people to the Los Angeles Convention Center, the exhibit halls and meeting rooms are buzzing.

Big global companies–Sanyo, Sharp, LG, DuPont, 3M and others–are among 1,100 exhibitors clamoring for attention. New products and deals are being announced. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar arrives tomorrow (Oct. 13) to talk about the Obama administration’s efforts to generate large-scale production of renewable energy on public lands.

There’s good reason for all the excitement. The U.S. solar electric industry, including both photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) installations, could achieve a milestone by installing a gigawatt of new capacity in 2010. That’s enough to power 200,000 homes, and it’s double the capacity installed in 2009.

Rhone Resch, the president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), which organizes the event with the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA), told the gathering this morning:

We now live in a world where you can be born in a solar hospital, get educated in a solar school, go to a solar college and while there drink beer brewed at a solar brewery.

 

Get married in a solar church, go to work in a solar office building, watch your favorite baseball team in a solar stadium and live in a country protected by the world’s best armed forces powered by solar. And I’m hopeful that when I get to that magic age, my kids have the opportunity to put me in a solar-powered nursing home.

The breadth and depth of solar in our lives is amazing.

The numbers back up his claim. Solar is the fastest growing form of electric generation in the U.S.,  albeit off a very small base: Less than 1 percent of the electricity in the U.S. is solar powered. But a new report from the SEIA and GTM Research projects that despite the sluggish economy, 944 megawatts of solar electric capacity (composed of 866 MW of PV and 79 MW of CSP) will be installed in the U.S. this year. That’s its baseline scenario. A higher-end forecast puts the number at 1.13 gigawatts.

Either way, that’s an increase of more than 100 percent over the 441 megawatts of solar electric capacity added in 2009. What other business do you know that’s growing by 100 percent this year?

[Disclosure: I’m here at SPI to moderate a CEO panel on the future of the solar business and being paid by the industry to do so.]

Why the growth? Two reasons, fundamentally.