This week, California Solar and Storage Association (CALSSA) celebrated the milestone of California reaching one million solar roofs. California solar advocates’ new goal is to reach 1 million solar-charged batteries by 2025.
The report released by the CALSSA provides a deeper look at the state’s solar success story. Here are some parts of the report that I find useful.
– Rooftop solar energy and energy storage is a job-intensive clean technology.
More than 77,000 Californians work year-round building local solar and storage.
– The solar and storage industry employs more people than the states five largest
utilities combined.
– A large majority of solar and storage employers are local small businesses. Nearly
half employ fewer than 10 people.
– Each year, California workers install more than 3 million solar panels on rooftops,
parking lots, and farms.
– Every day, California workers install 3.3 MW of rooftop solar. Sixty jobs are created
for every MW installed.
Many apartment buildings, businesses and government agencies across the state benefit
from distributed solar systems
– The non-residential solar market has been stronger than originally envisioned in the
Million Solar Roofs initiative. Because commercial systems are larger, this caused California to reach its energy capacity goal (3 GW) in 2015, four years ahead of reaching the million solar roofs goal.
– More than 2,000 schools in California have solar on their roofs or parking structures.
– More than 500 low-income apartment buildings have solar.
Bakersfield has 3x the number of people with solar as San Francisco, with half the population.
Bakersfield solar roofs: 28,145; San Francisco solar roofs: 8,272
Bakersfield population: 387,874; San Francisco population: 884,363
Fresno has nearly 4x the solar roofs as Oakland, with the same population
Fresno solar roofs: 22,992; Oakland solar roofs: 5,883
Fresno population: 494,665; Oakland population: 425,195
Clovis has over 3x the number of solar roofs as Berkeley, with the same population
Clovis solar roofs: 10,259; Berkeley solar roofs: 2,701
Clovis population: 109,691; Berkeley population: 122,324