The industry received a boost when clean energy tax credits were added to the $700 bailout bill to help its passage from Congress. But fears of falling demand and oversupply have weighed on solar stocks. The Claymore/MAC Global Solar Index ETF (NYSE:TAN) fell 35% in the first eight trading days of October.

William Patalon III, however, says new mapping technology and advances that have made solar power more eco-friendly will boost solar stocks in the long run.

This from Money Morning:

The owners of homes and businesses in 25 US cities will soon be able to use a free website to determine their rooftop’s solar-energy potential – thanks to a new specialized mapping program that has the backing of the US Department of Energy.

Engineering giant CH2M Hill Cos. Ltd., an employee-owned firm with about $5 billion in annual revenue, has received a “small-but-noteworthy” contract of $6 million under the U.S. Solar America Initiative to provide raw data on solar-power potential, MarketWatch reported.

The contract will pay the expansion of the city of San Francisco’s recently posted solar energy map. It will use advanced 3-D modeling and aerial imagery and will be available for public access through a special web portal.

Punching an address into the city’s search engine pulls up data on the estimated amount of solar photovoltaic energy that could be installed on a specific roof. Additional available data includes the potential electricity-cost reduction and the potential reduction in dioxide/greenhouse gases, the company said.

The website also provides information on installing a photovoltaic system, including contact information for local solar installers.

David Herrmann, CH2M Hill’s director of client solutions, said the mapping program could potentially replace the current method of assessing solar energy potential.

“Right now, to get a solar assessment on a roof, you have to call up the solar installer, they bring their ladder, a guy wanders around on your roof, and two or three weeks later you get a report,” Herrmann told MarketWatch. “With this technology, you could do it accurately and quickly without having to roll a truck.”

Herrmann said the company’s solar maps use a format from Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google Maps to display the data, but that CH2M Hill collects the images through its own proprietary process with Esri Inc. – A Redlands, Calif.-based company that’s recognized as a leader in geographic information systems (GIS) also supplying technology for the effort.

The solar map is also compatible with the Microsoft (NYSE:MSFT) Virtual Earth display, he said.

Herrmann said the Internet-mapping business remains healthy, with companies routinely paying for airplane flyovers to provide panoramic shots of streets and buildings all across the United States.

The 25 cities for which this service will be available will include: Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, San Jose, Calif.; Santa Rosa, Calif.; Seattle; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Austin, Tex.; Berkeley, Calif.; Boston, New Orleans, New York City and Tucson, Ariz.

Also, advances in technology have made solar cell production even more eco-friendly.

A recent study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., found that for each unit of energy produced by solar cells, the pollution that’s emitted during the cells’ manufacture is only 2% to 11% the amount produced by power plants in the United States and Europe.

In fact, newly developed solar cells can “pay back” the energy required for their production in just one to three years. And improvements in manufacturing efficiency could reduce emissions from solar power by another 50% in five to 10 years, according to a recent report by Money Morning.

There have been tremendous advances in the production and efficiency of solar technologies.

And those advances couldn’t have come at a better time. Political support for the industry is at an all-time high as oil prices and environmental awareness both continue to rise.

The Englewood, Colo.-based CH2M Hill has 23,000 employees and ranked 54 on Fortune magazine’s 11th annual “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, a ranking that was published in late January. It’s the third time the company has ranked among those top-tier companies. CH2M Hill has also been recognized as a “Most Admired Company” by Fortune for the past five years.

CH2M HILL has been repeatedly recognized for its competitive compensation-and-benefits packages, employee ownership, and reputation for landing challenging projects, some the most recent include:

• Program management for the seven-year, $5 billion expansion of the Panama Canal.

• Overseeing the design and construction of the venues and infrastructure for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.

• The engineering and construction of the Xcel Energy Inc.’s (XEL) 580-megawatt gas-fired High Bridge Power Plant near St. Paul, Minn.

• Providing program management consulting services for the $2 billion improvement program for India’s Mumbai airport.

• Engineering services for the Southern Seas Desalination Plant in Perth, Australia, which will use “green” energy to supply 20% of that city’s water needs.
• Managing a $10 billion military-base-relocation program for the U.S. and South Korean governments

Alternative Energy Update: Can Your Rooftop Lower Your Electricity Bill?

My primary weather experience was in a windswept place, where even calm days had an intermittent 30 mph “breeze.”

And maybe that’s why I can’t get excited about storage for wind-turbine energy. The idea that the wind might stop blowing for an extended period of time and you may need to rely on stored power, while evident to me on a daily (or at least weekly) basis out here on the East Coast, is antithetical to deep-seated instinct.

Despite my insistent, if illogical, argument against the idea, I am assured by those in the business that, yes, wind turbines do sometimes stop moving. And when they do, batteries to store and release back excess energy from earlier, more blustery, hours is a necessity, which is where NGK Insulators (NGKIF: Pink Sheets) comes in.

Alternative Energy Stocks: Sodium and sulfur

NGK, a Japanese industrial ceramics manufacturer, just began selling nontoxic sodium-sulfur batteries with 4.3 times the capacity of their highly toxic lead-acid counterparts.

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Japan Wind Development Company, which helped NDK create the batteries specifically for the wind-farm industry, is trying them out at its Rokkasho wind farm, and analysts think the batteries could generate 13 times the profit for the farm during peak hours if they work as expected.

The NAS batteries, named for the elemental symbols of their two main components (Na for sodium, S for sulfur), offer wind farmers the chance to store energy generated during non-peak hours, meaning much higher profits when they sell it at peak-hour prices.

And it’s a good thing, too. The batteries cost $2.9 million per megawatt of storage capacity. But that could be worth it if wind farms can efficiently save the power they build up at night to sell to electric companies during the day, when energy goes for a much higher price.

The NAS batteries are the most “dense” on the market, meaning they store the most amount of energy in the least amount of space. And they require uniform, high-grade ceramic that, NGK says, it, alone, has been successful in producing. In other words, they’re the most efficient batteries in the industry, and only NGK makes them.

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The Biggest Solar Energy Project Ever

Using a source officially discovered by NASA in 1978, a small California company has perfected a way to harness the “Earth’s Energy Budget.” which NASA has measured at 174 trillion kilowatts per day.

Yes, I said 174 trillion kilowatts each day. That’s enough energy to power New York City for 1,827 years.

And this tiny California solar company, recently featured on NBC’s Today Show, just figured out how to harness this energy. In less than a decade, these systems will be on nearly every home and office building in North America. Learn more…

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Alternative Energy Stocks: Trial runs

Xcel Energy (XEL: NYSE), the largest wind-power company in the U.S., is testing out NAS batteries. And the country’s largest coal-electricity producer American Electric Power Company (AEP: NYSE) just ordered 7 megawatts of storage from NGK in hopes that the batteries will smooth out its current power production. Success in these companies could mean energy storage may soon have a new leader.

NGK trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and it has a pink sheet listing in the States. But I’m not willing to recommend the company just yet.

Alternative Energy Stocks: 1% is not enough

NGK is still primarily an industrial ceramics company. And its battery division, although profitable for the first time in 2007, currently makes up less than 1% of the company’s total earnings.

Estimates for the fiscal year ended March 31 put the company’s NAS battery division at a profit of 500 million yen (about $4.96 million), while the company’s total profit will probably be around 67 billion yen ($664 million). If NGK’s new batteries do catch on, the division will have to ramp up sales quite a bit before it makes a sizeable impact on the company’s bottomline.