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If you're a power semiconductor manufacturing executive and you're not at least examining the solar energy market, you should make sure your golden parachute is packed and ready to go. The latest chipmaker talking photovoltaics is National Semiconductor's Brian Halla during his company's fourth-quarter/fiscal year-end conference call on Thursday. (The company had better-than-expected results, btw.)

Here are excerpts from Seeking Alpha's transcript of the call, offering a few general details of National's apparent solar play. First, from Halla's opening remarks.

"Being the industry leader in power management in the world entering a clear energy crisis puts us in an advantageous position to make a major contribution in the area of energy conservation.

"The first major output of our National 3.0 initiatives will be unveiled this summer in the photovoltaic area. Our SolarMagic technology will dramatically improve the efficiency of solar panels, even for example, in shaded conditions, an innovation made possible by utilizing our analog PowerWise power management circuits."

In answer to a question about the top two or three new markets where National will focus its top-line growth, Halla made the following comments.

"As I said in my commentary, we have redirected many forces, we directed a significant amount of R&D budget into what we call key market segments.... One of them that we will have an announcement in this quarter is solar, or alternative energy, where we've made some pretty significant gains in for the photovoltaic technology. We are right now entering a phase of field trials as well as there is about a six-month certification process with UL and BDE, and so we have high hopes that we'll have smooth sailing through them. But that's the closest one, the area of photovoltaic."

When asked how big the solar business is expected to be at National, Halla replied with tongue somewhat in cheek.

"I'm not an expert on solar, we just plan to make a lot of money there, but in terms of how big the business is today, there's a couple of things that have held that business back. Specifically, to answer your question, 0.4% of rooftops that are available for solar panels, 0.4% in Northern California have panels. If you contrast that with Germany where their subsidies are a lot higher and much more friendly, they've already covered 8% of the rooftops. And all of North America, I think right now, solar has expanded as far as 0.04% of the available rooftops, or warehouse tops or whatever.

"Clearly the potential is there. The other thing that has kind of held that market back is the best technology out there today is 20% efficient on the solar panel, that's with silicon crystal and everything else goes down from there, including thin-film, which is like 10% efficient.

"So one of the things that has held back the expansion is that there is a lengthy time to pay back because the efficiency of these rays tend to get perturbed by many, many things, including aging, including clouds, and even bird poop. No, we haven't invented an electronic bird pooper scooper but we have done something that we think is significant in the area of improving efficiencies, and we will just have to let that play out and we will let our partners, we're in field trial, tell us if they agree with us."

Perhaps Halla has stumbled on a new solar-module cleaning accessory market opportunity.