President Barack Obama has announced nearly $2 billion in government loan guarantees for two solar projects. The two projects will create 5,000 jobs, the president said in his weekly radio address. The guarantees are funded by 2009 economic stimulus package and represent the 12th and 13th such guarantees provided by the Department of Energy, bringing the sum DOE loans for clean energy to $14.8 billion.

President Obama in his announcement acknowledged that efforts to recover from the recession are slow a day after the Labor Department reported that private hiring in June rose by 83,000.

"It's going to take months, even years, to dig our way out and it's going to require an all-hands-on-deck effort," President Obama said. 5,000 jobs are expected to be created through use of $1.85 billion in money taken from the $787 billion economic stimulus that Obama pushed through the U.S. Congress in early 2009.

President Obama announced the Energy Department will award $1.45 billion in loan guarantees to Abengoa Solar Inc to help it build Solana, one of the largest solar generation plants in the world near Gila Bend, Arizona. Abengoa Solar, headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado, is a unite of Spanish renewable energy and engineering company Abengoa SA (ABG.MC: Quote). The American President also said $400 million in loan guarantees will be awarded to Colorado-based Abound Solar Manufacturing to produce advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs.

The Solana plant is expected to generate 280 megawatts of electricity - sufficient to power 70,000 homes will use solar thermal technology developed by Albengoa Solar of Spain. This technology uses mirrors to concentrate heat from the sun, which is carried by a special fluid and used to power generators. The Solana facility will also for the first time use molten salt to store electricity for up to six hours, enabling it to operate when the sky is cloudy or at night.

Meanwhile, solar power is gradually becoming the norm with many American households replacing conventional electric service with home-based solar electricity systems. The American Solar Energy Society and the society's magazine, Solar Today, say that solar energy is becoming more of a presence in single-family homes, noting that it is beginning to challenge fossil- fuel-generated power, especially on the basis of cost.