Without a doubt, the Power-Gen Renewable Energy conference is strong and growing. For US energy professionals involved with the commercial future of renewable energy, this is practically a mandatory education and networking event.

The second annual conference, held in Las Vegas this week, drew close to 1,500 delegates and over 100 exhibitors -- significantly more than last year on both counts.

Delegates are engineers and procurement people from utilities, industry and transportation, here to network with suppliers and contingents from local and federal government, education and science. Exhibitors ranged from small R&D companies to the largest players in the industry.

The focus of the conference was purely on renewable energy. The content was about evenly split between power and fuels. For power there was a strong emphasis on supply-side renewables in the sessions and exhibits.

Conference sessions were organized around four tracks: renewable energy technologies; market development; regulatory and financing trends; and fuels and hydrogen. Each track offered four presentation sessions. The panelists were generally very knowledgeable, the panels were chaired by respected industry insiders. The question-and-answer sessions were always entertaining.

Exhibits
Vendors represented almost every imaginable sector of renewables, from GE's hydropower to Vestas's turbines to Konarka's power plastics, with notable concentrations in solar, wind and bio. Ten wind vendors offered turbines, microturbines, towers, or related equipment. Given the attention on hydrogen in recent years, and the conference track devoted to fuels and hydrogen, it was a surprise to find only one fuel cell vendor exhibiting here.

Almost one fifth of the exhibitors -- BP Solar, Kyocera and 19 others -- were promoting solar technologies. GE Energy was a prominent exhibitor with both wind and solar products on display.

Theme
The conference kicked off with a keynote address by Dr. Dan Arvizu, who recently took over as Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

This year's theme was "Moving into the Mainstream." That would seem to apply to some sectors more than to others -- hydro and wind are arguably mature technologies with broad acceptance worldwide, even if not presently enjoying viability for growth in the US -- but there was a sense that many newer technologies are indeed moving closer to widespread adoption.

Regardless, there was a notable absence of mainstream media at the event -- even among the local TV stations, despite an announcement at the conference of Nevada's regulatory approval of a 3.1 megawatt solar project to be built for the host city's Water District by exhibitor PowerLight.

Power-Gen Renewable Energy is presented by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) and Penwell, publishers of Power Engineering magazine. The third annual conference will be held April 4-6, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

ACORE partners with Euromoney Energy Events to highlight opportunities in renewable energy finance markets worldwide. The 2005 Forum will be June 23-24, 2005, in New York.