California Solar Power | Solar Panels, Battery Storage, Roofing, HVAC
"California dreaming" is a famous catchphrase, but our state doesn’t linger in wistfulness. Instead, we dream big and then we go big. Our state isn’t afraid to embrace change and lead the pack. Nowhere is this sentiment truer than in how our politicians, institutions, businesses, and citizens have embraced California solar power and other sources of renewable energy. And our efforts continue to pay off. California is the number one producer of solar power in the country. We didn’t just eek out this victory, we shattered the record. In fact, we’ve broken quite a few solar energy records over the past decades and are likely to keep breaking them as we lead the country into a renewable energy future. California Record 1: State that produces the most solar energy in the country. Setting the Groundwork One of the biggest reasons California is such a huge producer of solar energy is because our state and local officials have a history of lowering our carbon footprint. That started back in 2006, when Governor Schwarzenegger signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act, which required a sharp reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Following in his predecessor’s footsteps, Governor Brown signed an even more ambitious bill in 2015. The Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act calls for the Golden State to produce at least half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. This bill has put the rest of the country on notice that California is leading the charge, and the results speak for themselves! Our state government isn’t the only one jumping on board the solar panel train. Many of our cities and municipalities are making headlines for their groundbreaking programs. For example, in 2016, San Francisco became the first city to pass a law requiring most new buildings to incorporate rooftop solar panels or solar heating units! California Record 2: San Francisco was the first city to legally require certain new buildings to have rooftop solar. Building the Infrastructure Legislation like the California Global Warming Solutions Act and the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act, along with buy-in from the state’s public utility companies, has led to a golden age of solar energy in California. Companies have flocked to start building a solar energy empire within our borders. Many of our long stretches of sun-soaked deserts are now home to massive solar panel farms as well as solar thermal power plants. It should come as no surprise that our state is home to the oldest solar power plant, the Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert, which was completed in 1990. We can also boast about the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, which is currently the largest solar thermal power plant in the world. Its 173,500 heliostats have the capacity to produce 392 MW (megawatts) of energy each year. Our state isn’t slowing down, either. In Kings County, Westlands Solar Park near Fresno is under construction. The park, with its numerous photovoltaic power plants, will be the largest photovoltaic power plant in the world, with an estimated capacity of over 2,000 MW a year! California’s residents aren’t sitting out of the solar revolution. According to the Los Angeles Times, 234,000 residents had solar panels sitting on their roofs in 2014. That number is likely to be dramatically higher today. So many Californians have invested in California solar energy that residential solar panels account for roughly 4% of the state’s entire energy production! Let’s see more of those records roll in: California Record 3: Home of the oldest solar power plant in the world, the SEGS thermal plant. California Record 4: Home to the largest solar thermal power plant in the world, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility. California Record 5: Home to the largest photovoltaic power plant under construction, the Westlands Solar Park. California Record 6: Most residents with residential solar panels. A Solar Leader With the political willpower and solar infrastructure in place, it’s no surprise that California has become a solar energy record-smashing machine. In 2016, California was ranked above any other U.S. state for cumulative solar capacity, leading the pack with over 18,000 MW of installed solar electric capacity. That’s enough to power over 4.7 million homes in the state! Just for comparison, the next closest state, North Carolina, had just over 3,000 MW of installed solar energy capacity in the same year, enough to power around 340,000 homes. California’s solar energy revolution has also led to big headlines. In March of 2017, the state crossed a huge threshold, producing 67.2% of its energy from renewable resources and proving that our goal for 2030 isn’t just another big California dream. Additionally, our California solar power revolution has led to other records lying in the dust. We employed over 100,000 workers in the solar energy field in 2016, the highest number in the country. We have the capacity to produce 466 watts of renewable energy per resident each year — although that actually isn’t a record. Nevada owns the title for highest solar energy capacity per capita at 745 watts per resident. However, considering that California has a population of 39.5 million while Nevada’s population is just under 3 million, we’re okay losing out on this particular title! Here are our final California solar power records: California Record 7: Produced over 67% of its energy from renewable resources. California Record 8: Has the highest number of solar industry jobs in the country. Join the Winning Team Holding all of these solar energy records feels pretty good, don’t you think? Everyone loves being a winner, especially when victory also means our state is taking real steps to lower its carbon footprint, which can help combat climate change. We have no doubt that California’s big ideas and ambitious renewable energy goals will translate into even more shattered California solar energy records in the future. Do you want to help our state reach its goal to produce 50% of its energy needs through renewable resources by 2030? Then it’s time to take advantage of historically low pricing on solar panels by scheduling an energy audit with Semper Solaris. We are proud to help homeowners throughout California, including San Diego and Los Angeles, lower their electric bills and their carbon footprint. Let’s keep leading the solar energy pack together!
California is a big state filled with big ideas and great people. Here in the Golden State, we’re not afraid to take the lead in tackling thorny problems or try innovative solutions. You could say that our “sunny” disposition inspires us to embrace new ideas. So it’s no surprise that we were one of the first states to recognize the potential of solar energy to combat climate change, or that we’re recognized as #1 on SEIA’s Top 10 Solar States list, producing more megawatts (MWs) of solar power than the next nine states combined! In this article, we’ll take a look at the history of California solar power. How did our state become the leader in producing and utilizing solar energy, and what does the future have in store? Power from the Sun If you were to take a helicopter tour over any major city in California, you would notice the sheer number of solar panels dotting the roofs of homes and businesses. Where did these panels come from? The history of California solar starts in 1839, when French physicist Alexandre Edmond Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect, demonstrating that a solar cell could convert sunlight into electricity. A few decades later, American inventor Charles Fritts designed the world’s first solar array, but it would still be a long time before solar panels landed on any roofs. Bell Labs patented the first silicon-based solar cells in 1954, and Hoffman Electronics-Semiconductor Division developed the first commercial solar panel the next year. This baby boasted a measly 2% efficiency rate! Just to compare, today’s top-rated solar panels can give you a 17% to 20% efficiency rate depending what brand you use. In these early days, solar panels were mostly just an idea stuck on a drawing board. It would take a major world event and open-minded politicians to truly spark the California solar energy movement. Oil and Blood The 1970s saw great unrest in the Middle East, which led to the Iran hostage crisis and the Arab oil embargo. At home, oil prices soared, and images of long lines of cars waiting at gas stations splashed the front pages of newspapers. In response, President Jimmy Carter made energy policy a hallmark of his administration. In 1978, Congress passed the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), which was designed to promote energy conservation and laid the groundwork for net metering. As part of the act, PURPA allowed independent power producers the ability to interconnect with their local utility. In the same year, Congress also passed the Energy Tax Act, which offered the very first tax credits to consumers who invested in renewable energy for their homes. Carter even famously installed solar panels at the White House. Even though the solar panels came down and the tax incentives were phased out by Ronald Reagan, these early laws woke Americans up to the possibility of solar energy. They also helped encourage the creation of wind and solar energy companies, which found a very friendly reception in California. (Interesting to note: solar panels were eventually installed once again at the White House, this time under President Barack Obama.) California Sun More than any other state, California embraced the potential of solar power even in the industry’s nascent beginnings. In 1979, ARCO Solar broke ground on the world’s largest photovoltaic facility in Camarillo, California. ARCO’s project was soon followed by others, including a 6 MW facility in central California, the construction of solar towers, and an attempt to build the world’s largest solar thermal electricity facility in the Mojave Desert, known as the LUZ Solar Energy Generating Stations. Not all of these projects were a success. Some ran out of money and others were eventually closed down due to disappointing results. Some observers believed that solar would never be more than a fringe power source, just another big California dream that went nowhere. However, these early stumbles didn’t deter California. Producers learned from each trial, and as solar technology improved and costs decreased, more ambitious solar projects got underway. As of this writing, California is home to a variety of big solar projects, including the Desert Solar Farm in the Mojave Desert, the California Valley Solar Ranch in the Carrizo Plain, the Mount Signal Solar project near Calexico, and the Topaz Solar Farm in San Luis Obispo County, which was the world’s largest photovoltaic power plant when it was completed in 2014. While ARCO’s original solar facility in 1979 produced just 1 MW a year, these facilities produce between 260 to 550 MW per year! California can also brag about being home to the world’s largest solar thermal power project, the Invanpah Solar Power Facility, which was completed in 2014. It resides in the Mojave Desert and produces 392 MW per year. The Mojave Desert is also home to the Solar Energy Generating Systems, the Genesis Solar Energy Project, and the Mojave Solar Project, which together produced 71.2% of all solar thermal generation in the United States in 2015. None of these projects would have been possible if California hadn’t aggressively supported investment in renewable energy and forged a path toward a carbon-neutral future. Taking the Lead California was once known for the debilitating smog that choked its cities and its people. These days, it’s earned a new reputation as a state that has passed some of the most ambitious and progressive energy laws in the country. It may have started in 1996 with the Electric Utility Industry Restructuring Act (Assembly Bill 1890) signed by Governor Pete Wilson, which deregulated the state’s utility companies and incentivized them to adopt net metering policies. Without net metering, which allows homes and businesses to feed excess solar energy into the grid, solar panels in California would likely never have taken off. AB 1890 also created state rebates to reduce the cost of this expensive new technology. Perhaps the biggest boost to California solar energy came in 2006, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the California Solar Initiative, which offered rebates to residents who invested in solar energy technology. The goal of the initiative was to install 1,940 MW of new solar generation capacity by 2016. It worked out so well that the state exhausted its incentives two years early, and the program surpassed its production target. (Don’t worry, there are still plenty of ways to save on solar panels in California.) The California Solar Initiative was followed in 2015 by the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act (Senate Bill 350) signed by Governor Jerry Brown. SB 350 stipulates that California must produce half of its power from renewable sources by 2030. This is an incredibly ambitious goal, but if anyone can do it, we know California can. Our state produced 18,296 MW of electricity in 2016, which was enough energy to power more than 4.7 million homes in our state. As solar panels in California continue to become more efficient and more affordable, we know these numbers will keep going up! The Future of California Solar Power What’s in store for California’s solar future? Will we produce half our power from renewable resources by 2030 and meet the mandate of the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act? Currently, several big photovoltaic solar farms are in production, including the Blythe Solar Power Project in Riverside County and the California Flats Solar Project in the Cholame Hills, which will produce even more solar energy for our state. As for Sacramento, we won’t be surprised if our state sets more aggressive goals for renewable energy output. In 2017, senate leader Kevin de León introduced the 100 Percent Clean Energy Act, which set the target for California to receive all its energy from clean energy sources by 2045. The bill was dropped at the last minute, but many assume the bill will be presented again during this year’s legislative session. Here at Semper Solaris, we are proud to help California meet its renewable energy goals. We can learn a lot from our state’s history, but we’re also excited to see what the future of California solar power brings. Help us make that future by scheduling a free energy audit today.
