The Blog almost doubled in popularity during a 2008 filled with personal challenges centered around the GUNTHER Portfolio Hiatus auto accident and aftermath. Per FeedBurner, RSS and email subscribers grew from 400 to about 750 at year end. After numerous delays transparent to readers, GUNTHER Portfolio launches guntherportfolio.com marked the Beta launch of the Blog onto a self-hosted domain. I still consider it Beta.

Here are what I consider to be my top 10 photovoltaic posts from 2008 using popularity, exclusive content, and my own subjective ranking criteria.

1. Stion leaves Photovoltaic Patent Trail – This post generated the highest single traffic day at the Blog thanks to a link from Martin LaMonica at the CNET news.com Green Tech Blog in “Green news harvest: 500-mile fuel cell car, Linux gets ‘green flag’”.

2. Nanosolar: Photovoltaic Hindsight Insights? REVISED and Nanosolar: Photovoltaic Hindsight Insights? Anything Nanosolar always generates photovoltaic interest (see also Searching for the Second Nanosolar?).

3. ITC Myopia: New Solar Investment Tax Credit Deficiencies Exposed! was the anticlimax to the successful two year effort to extend the solar ITC.

4. Feed-in Tariffs: Solar FiT for the USA spawned related posts AB 1920: California bill goes beyond Net Metering and 1st Solar Symposium: Feed-in Tariff for California First.

5. RSI Silicon: Solar Grade Silicon from Pennsylvania (then Alabama) delved into the RSI Silicon manufacturing process.

6. Solarvalue produces Solar Grade Silicon sample material predicted the Solarvalue: Second Ruše Surprise.

7. Blue Square Energy: Solar plans stalled at funding round followed up later by Blue Square Energy: Interview with solar CEO Joseph Babin.

8. Global Solar Energy 750 kiloWatt CIGS Solar Field Live? may have triggered an early announcement of the installation. I appreciate Global Solar linking to my post on their In the News page!

9. In Search of RSI Silicon relaunched the “In Search of” series followed by In Search of GreenVolts GV1.

10. ersol Solar and Bosch: Perfect together? has renewed relevance with the “Report: Toyota developing solar powered green car” by YURI KAGEYAMA for AP.

Last year’s top posts were covered in Photovoltaics: 2007 Post Review and 2008 Trends to Watch – Part 1. A separate post will cover 2009 trends and predictions while scoring 2008 predictions in Photovoltaics: 2007 Post Review and 2008 Trends to Watch – Part 2.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year 2009 with health, happiness, and prosperity for us all.