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Arizona wants to be the “solar-energy hub of the world,” Kristin Mays, chair of the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities in the state, said at the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco this week.

The state last week enacted a law that offers new incentives, including a tax credit of up to 10 percent, for solar companies that set up shop there.

At the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco this week, some state rivalry became apparent as Arizona leaders argued the state’s advantages compared to California. “We know the Mojave desert’s off limits. Well, the desert in Arizona is open for business,” said Barry Broome, CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, to laughter from the audience.

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More than 17,000 solar industry insiders are gathering in San Francisco this week for the annual Intersolar North America conference.

Conference organizers say the event is bigger this year, attracting more than double the attendees as the inaugural event last year – when the industry saw the solar-technology market grow 80 percent, with 5.5 gigawatts of sales, according to Navigant Consulting analyst Paula Mints – as well as more than double the number of exhibitors and almost triple the floor space. The growth has been “faster than we ever imagined,” said Eicke Weber, chairman of the conference committee and director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in a press release.

The boost this year may seem surprising at first glance, because the solar industry is in a downturn. Slower demand – partly due to an incentive cap in Spain that significantly shrank what was the largest market in the world last year, as well as limited financing in the recession – have led to falling solar-panel prices around the world. Mints estimates the market this year will fall to 3.75 gigawatts. “That’s going to hurt,” she said, especially because the industry’s gotten used to high growth rates and has built some 11 gigawatts of run-rate capacity. “We’ve overbuilt.”

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Solar is already a source of power. Now some hope solar projects’ striking appearance can also make them a powerful marketing tool.

For the Fourth of July, concentrating solar-thermal startup eSolar programmed a quarter square mile of mirrors in Lancaster, Calif., to form the American flag and the Statue of Liberty.

The point? To celebrate Independence Day, and to help lobby for the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which would enact a carbon cap-and-trade program and other emission-reduction measures if approved and signed into law. The House of Representatives passed the controversial bill last month, and the Senate is now considering it.

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While cleantech investment appears to be on the rebound, it’s clear the recession isn’t over yet. Mark Jensen, managing partner for the venture capital services group at Deloitte & Touche, said Wednesday that about half of the largest venture-capital firms expect to reduce their overall investments in the next few years in response to the recession.

But venture-capital firms expect cleantech to fare better than most other categories. According to the Deloitte survey, a whopping 95 percent said they plan to either increase or maintain their level of cleantech investment, with 63 percent anticipating more investment and 32 percent expecting to invest the same amount as they do now.

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Solar venture investments hit a three-year low in the second quarter, the Cleantech Group said Wednesday. According to Brian Fan, senior director of research for the group, solar startups in North America, Europe, China and India raised a total of only $113.8 million for the quarter, which is down 7 percent from $365.7 million in the first quarter and down 86 percent from $834.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

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