Top 10 California Solar City

Can anyone take a guess at which California city has the highest deployment of solar roofs?

As per a 2009 report published by Environment California Rearch and Policy Center, that city is San Diego with an installed base of 2,262 solar roofs generating 19,427 KWatts of power.

If you're wondering who are the remaining cities in the top 10 list, may I suggest downloading the report by clicking here.

Solar Power and California Jobs

Thanks to California's ambitious goal of 1 Million solar roofs by 2017, a 20,000-person years of emploment is projected with a steady job growth rate for the next 10 years. If you are interested in how these numbers were arrived at, here's a link to the Eelectric Power Research Institute (EPRI) which provided resarch data for the California Energy Commision(CEC).

What's behind the Solar Panels?

As a California resident you either have installed or planning on installing a set of Solar Panels on your rooftop. Ever wonder what the Solar Panels are made of and what makes them power the grid in your house? I have attempted to break it down in layman's terms. The main componets that make the Solar Panels tick are:

• Photo-Voltaic Cell (PVC) array
• Mechanical frame to mount these PVC arrays in
• Core Inverter to convert to Direct-Current(DC) from the PVC to Alternating-Currenr(AC)
• Synchronising circuit that puts the generated AC current on to the power grid

If you need more details, here's a decent site from our friends at Discovery.