The largest solar business-to-business event in North America got off to a fast start in Los Angeles yesterday.

“Looking over the show floors, it’s jammed,” said Solar Power International spokeswoman Monique Hanis. “The aisle ways are bustling, and you can tell that business is happening here.”

There are a record 1,100 exhibitors occupying three exhibit halls, one more than the event needed last year, Hanis said. She expects to have 27,000 registered visitors from the industry.

“We’ve had a lot of on-sight registration,” Hanis said. “We’re definitely on track to hit 27,000 if not a little more.”

The event will be open and free to the public tomorrow. Hanis expects to see about 5,000 visitors pour through the doors to find out about what’s new in the solar industry. There’s a big billboard advertising the open evening outside of the hall along with radio spots.

“It’s hard to pick just one thing,” Hanis said of the exhibits that caught her interest, “just one technology. There’s so much. We have some really large exhibits this year.”

She said one of the challenges for event organizers this year was finding the space. Many companies wanted big areas to showcase actual examples of their technologies.

Hanis said a lot of the industry improvements being highlighted at the event are incremental ones that make the technology easier and faster to install and more efficient to run.

She said that people have also quickly booked up all of the extra meeting space organizers provided this year.

“There’s a lot of energy here,” Hanis said. “People are running around in suits with fistfuls of business cards.”

Industry analysts announced that solar grew during the first three quarters of 2010 and will announce tomorrow the resulting job growth, Hanis said.

“It’s the first time we’re going to have an actual count,” Hanis said. “And it looks like there have been nearly 100,000 new jobs created in the solar industry this year.”

That report is expected to be released with details at Solar Power International tomorrow.The three-day event ends Oct. 14.