Excellence in Renewable Energy Awards Finalists Unveiled

Online voting for the Reader's Choice Award will be open until January 31. Votes can be cast at the Awards website: http://awards.renewableenergyworld.com

The Excellence in Renewable Energy awards recognize the most innovative technologies, projects and people within the renewable energy industries. The award winners will be announced and recognized at the Renewable Energy World North America Conference and Expo, which takes place in Austin, Texas from February 23-25, 2010.

After receiving hundreds of nominations, RenewableEnergyWorld.com editors have narrowed down the finalists in each category – and now it's time for readers to choose their favorite project or technology among them all.

The four categories that readers can choose from include:

Project of the Year

• eSolar's 5-MW Sierra SunTower
• First Wind's 200-MW Milford Wind Corridor
• Enel's 65-MW Stillwater and Salt Wells Geothermal Power Plants
• Hydro Green Energy's 250-kW Minnesota Project
• E.ON Climate and Renewables 781-MW Roscoe Wind Farm

Utility-Scale Renewables

• First Solar & Enbridge's 20-MW Sarnia Solar Project
• Southern California Edison & ProLogis's 2.4-MW Project
• SMUD's 1.2-MW Solar Share Program
• Tacoma Power's 300-MW Mossyrock Hydro Rebuild
• Beacon Power's 20-MW Flywheel Plant

Distributed and On-Site Renewables

• Solyndra 602-kW Rooftop CIGS PV Project for Costco
• Florida Crystals Renewable Co-Generation Plant using Sugar Cane Bagase Combustion
• Recurrent Energy's 1-MW Solar PV Project for The North Face
• Solar Electric Light Fund's 10-kW Haitian Health Clinic Project
• SPG Solar's 478-kW "Floatovoltaics" Project for Far Niente Winery

Building Integrated Renewables

• Yale's 105.6kW Kroon Hall Project Featuring SunPower BIPV & Geothermal
• Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation's Building Integrated Wind Project
• Bardessono Inn Featuring 197-kW of BIPV
• The Visionaire Building Featuring 48-kW of altPOWER BIPV
• John Molson School of Business at Concordia University Featuring 25-kW PV & 75-kW Thermal SolarWall PV/Thermal Hybrid System

RenewableEnergyWorld.com editors will also announce the winner of the Innovation Award and the Leadership in Renewable Energy Award at the conference. These categories are not up for vote in the Reader's Choice Award. Nominees include:

Leadership in Renewable Energy

• Rhone Resch, President of the Solar Energy Industries Association
• Cliff Etheridge, community organizer and citizen leader on 781-MW Roscoe Wind Farm
• Dr. Ajeet Rohatgi, Founder and CTO of Suniva
• Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy
• Lisa Frantzis, Managing Director of Renewable and Distributed Energy, Navigant Consulting

Innovation in Renewable Energy

• Enphase Microinverter System
• Second Wind's Triton Sonic Wind Profiler
• Solyndra's Spherical Thin Film Module
• Cool Earth Solar's CPV Balloon
• Ontario, Canada's Feed-in Tariff Program

The Excellence in Renewable Energy Awards offer companies, municipalities, industry leaders, non-profits and other renewable energy stakeholders a chance to be recognized in front their peers for their major achievements in advancing the adoption of renewable energy across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The awards will be presented at the 7th Annual Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo North America, a leading event in the renewable energy industry.

Renewable Energy World Conference & Expo North America 2010 is expected to attract more than 5000 renewable energy industry professionals and more than 300 exhibitors to Austin, Texas to take part in the largest all-renewable conference and exhibition in the world, with conference sessions covering issues related to wind, solar, biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal and hydrogen technologies, projects and finance.