Of course it's the season for gatherings of friends and neighbors. But increasingly, 'tis also the season for solar power — and I'm speaking of "season" in the eon sense. Friday night, I joined about 30 other guests at a neighbor's home not to share holiday cheer but to learn details about home photovoltaic installations.

IBM, Dell, Intel, and the British grocer Tesco rated most highly in an assessment released Thursday by Ceres, a Boston-based national network of investors and public-interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability.

The Guardian newspaper is relentless in its coverage of the climate-change conference in Poland. Here's a link to an explainer on the big players, and to all its coverage.

I regret to report that your correspondent was ignorant of Steven Chu, the president-elect's designee for secretary of energy, but the reaction I'm reading today is very enthusiastic.

People who know of my interest in sustainability sometimes ask where to start, and my answer has varied over time, dependent on what new action I've been exposed to.

Perhaps this states what's obvious to others, but I've only recently come to understand that the right answer is the first one, whatever that is. Whether one starts with here or there doesn't matter nearly as much as having started.

I've been writing for a while about what Georgie and I do, and don't do, at home in the name of energy efficiency and sustainability. (You can see the series here.) I've been lax on keeping up, but we've added a few things recently:

Amory Lovins, the sophisticated thinker who cofounded the Rocky Mountain Institute and easily one of my green heroes, came to Cambridge last week, and I am bereft! It's the second time this year — the other was MIT's energy conference in March — that important topical events took place in Cambridge without my knowing it.

Oh, the affrontery! Don't they know who I think I am?

The windmill that stands tall beside I-93 in Dorchester is about to get a companion north of the city, in Medford.

The city is erecting a 100-kilowatt turbine at the McGlynn Middle School, with help from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and Mass. Energy, among other funders.

Joel Gordes, whom I know of through NESEA, says that if taxpayers are going to give $34 billion to bail out the Big 3 US automakers, one of the conditions should be that they must stop pursuing their selfish lawsuits against state regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

At Mass. Energy's annual meeting Wednesday night, solar vet Henry Vandermark told me about of SolarWave Energy, a venture he has in start-up that provides a real-time, remote monitor for solar systems. 

As I understand it, Vandermark will sell his service to installers, as a constituent of their warranty services, allowing them to make service calls before a crisis, and avoid making business calls when they may not be necessary.