Narrator:        This is Science Today. Two University of California campuses are teaming up to form a statewide Solar Energy Collaborative to expand the development and use of solar energy in California. David Weil, director of Building Commissioning & Sustainability at the University of California, San Diego, says the California Energy Commission has provided a two-year grant to their campus, along with the University of California, Davis, to form this collaboration.

Weil:   What that'll do is it will offer a springboard for new solar research. Many of our researchers here on campus are doing research in ways of improving photovoltaics and solar power, so we'll be able to incorporate that, possibly get some grant money through that program to help our researchers and other researchers. Really, a solar collaborative will be a place for all researchers in the state, if you will, to come and collaborate just as the saying says.

Narrator:        This new collaborative is also intended to help California install a target 3,000 megawatts of solar in California by 2017. For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.