Bay Area: sunny upside
The past decade has seen a surge in solar installations across the San Francisco Bay Area and the Silicon Valley leads the region. Top five counties in the region: 1. Santa Clara County [San Jose]: 2,462 solar installations 2. Alameda County [Oakland]: 1,699 3. Sonoma County: 1,611 4. Contra Costa County: 1,181 5. Santa Cruz County: 1,173
The NorCal Solar Energy Association is a non-profit, solar education group in Northern California. Their study looked at the increase of solar energy installations for 165 cities in the 10, Bay Area Counties for the year 2007.
California is the #1 state in the nation for installed solar generating capacity. It now has more than 60% of the nation's solar installations. The California state government Go Solar program has a 10-year budget of over $3 billion and a goal to transform the market for solar energy by installing at least 3,000 megawatts (MW) of new distributed solar energy.