Yahoo! Great news, reported today:
Late last Friday, grid operator California ISO (Cal-ISO) announced the state set an all-time solar record just before 1:00 pm when it registered 2,071 megawatts (MW) worth of solar electricity system-wide.
This record equaled 5% of Friday’s peak demand of 36,000 MW, was enough to power 1.5 million average California households, and is just under the 2,250MW of nuclear power removed from the state grid when the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station was retired. Even more remarkable, Friday’s output doubled the record set in September 2012 when solar peaked at 1,000 MW total generation.
The article goes on to say that "97% of all new electricity generation capacity scheduled to come online in California during the second half of 2013 will be solar power."
One thing you have to realize is that it was 107 degrees in the Central Valley on Friday - Fresno, Bakersfield, etc. Summer has come hard and hot here. So to offset 5% of peak demand on the first killer day of summer is great.
I am proud to a very tiny part of this revolution. We have a commercial and agricultural solar installation company and - slowly but surely - we're winning even conservative clients over to realizing that this makes economic sense.
Especially when you hear on the same day that the USG is not collecting anywhere near enough 'rent' on public lands being mined for coal that is then profitably sold abroad.