This has been a good year for solar power and the future looks even brighter.

The Coachella Valley is poised to become a regional leader in the emerging green energy industry, which offers wondrous possibilities to reduce dependence on foreign oil and carbon emissions.

Best of all, it could erase electricity bills for desert residents who install solar panels and even put money in their pockets. It's one of those ideas that makes so much sense you have to wonder why it hasn't happened already.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this month signed a bill to allow feed-in tariffs. If your house generates more electricity than you need, the extra electricity can be fed back to the power grid and you get paid for it.

This is great news for the Coachella Valley, especially for those who have already invested in solar panels.

It may not be much, probably wholesale prices, and it won't happen right away. The law gives the California Public Utilities Commission the power to set payback rates and gives it a deadline of Jan. 1, 2011, to do so.

The idea of feed-in tariffs has been the major driver for solar industries in Europe. It should be a powerful incentive in our desert, where the sun shines an average of 354 days a year.

Not only could it encourage new solar installations, those who have solar panels that don't generate more than 100 percent of the electricity they need may be encouraged to add on.

And for snowbirds, there's a potential to make money while they're away in their summer homes.

The number of solar panels installed in California increased 100 percent this year over the previous year, according to the governor's office. The number is expected to climb another 120 percent next year.

Last month, Schwarzenegger signed an executive order setting a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one-third by 2020. The feed-in tariffs, promoting renewable energy in place of fossil fuels, should help in that goal.

It should also help Palm Desert with its goal of cutting energy use by 30 percent by 2011, Palm Springs with its sustainability goals and other valley cities with their goals.

Beyond residential photovoltaic power generation, we'll soon be surrounded by solar farms to harness the sunshine.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited the Coachella Valley recently and talked about the federal government's goal of putting 13 solar projects on the fast track in seven Western states and break ground by the end of next year. Those projects would generate 5,300 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.8 million homes.

Four of the 13 solar projects are planned for an area totaling more than 200,000 acres between Joshua Tree and Blythe, the Riverside East Solar Study Zone.

“This valley has been the epicenter of demonstrating to the world that the solar energy potential is something that we will be able to accomplish,” Salazar said in Palm Springs, where he announced the opening of the Renewable Energy Coordination Office in the Bureau of Land Management's field office.

The goal is for the United States to generate 25 percent of its power through renewable resources by 2025.

With its vast resources of geothermal, wind and solar power, the Coachella Valley should be a powerful engine to help reach that goal.