Thursday marked a milestone for California solar energy, with the state's solar facilities adding more electricity to the grid than ever before.
The state’s Independent System Operator, CalISO, controls the electric grid in California. It tracks supply and demand – and on Thursday more than 3,000 megawatts of electricity from the sun flowed into the state’s power distribution system.
Very roughly, that’s enough to power about 3 million homes. According to CalISO, solar producers delivered three times as much electricity as they did a year ago.
And that’s not ALL of California’s solar energy.
CalISO doesn't track power from residential rooftop solar panels, whose contributions are counted "behind the meter," meaning at the source. As a result, there's probably a couple of thousand more megawatts of solar panels and projects that contribute to the grid.
If my math is right, that was enough solar added in this one year (outside of residential) for 2M homes. There are 13M homes in the state, according to the census.
The goal is 33% total power in the state to be renewable in 6 years.
This seems like remarkable progress in this arena!
