Mountain View is #3 Solar City in the Bay Area

Back on April 3 I reported on a survey about residential solar adoption around the state. Yesterday, the NorCal Solar Energy Association released a new study that ranked Bay Area cities in various aspects of solar adoption. Unlike the previous study, this one combined large scale commercial solar (like Google and Microsoft) with residential.

Of cities with more than 50,000 population, Mountain View ranked third in watts per capita. The top 5 large cities were:

1. Napa 43 watts/capita
2. Pleasanton 36
3. Mountain View 34
4. San Rafael 33
5. Santa Rosa 28

We came in #8 in terms of total installed watts for cities of any size. The figures for this category:

1. Oakland 6.0 megawatts
2. San Francisco 4.5
3. Santa Rosa 4.3
4. San Jose 3.7
5. Napa 3.2
6. Hayward 3.1
7. Pleasanton 2.4
8. Mountain View 2.4
9. Vacaville 2.3
10. San Rafael 1.8

About 80-85% of the installed capacity comes from Google and Microsoft, but those of us who participated in the Solar Buyers Group should feel proud of our contribution too.

San Rafael Had the Most Residential Solar in 2006

Steve Lacy sent me an interesting link on the Northern California Solar Energy Association's (NCSEA) site. It's a table that shows the cities that are "most solar" as measured on the basis of watts per capita of residential-sized system.

The data that NCSEA analayzed included all systems of less than 15 kW installed from 1998 through May 31, 2006. (15 kW is five times larger than a typical Mountain View solar system, but is about right for a large home in a hot climate like Fresno.) The data showed that San Rafael was the leader with 9.41 AC watts per capita of residential solar. Mountain View was not one of the top 10 cities last year.

I was able to tap into the same data source that NCSEA used, and found that as of 5/31/2006 Mountain View had installed 222.4 kW of residential-sized solar systems. Our population is about 73,000, so that put us at 3.05 watts per capita, roughly 1/3 as much as in San Rafael.

Another 44 kW was installed between 5/31/2006 and the start of the SolarCity program, so if we assume that SolarCity participants sign up for 200 kW, then by 5/31/2007 Mountain View will be home to a total of 466 solar kW.

When NCSEA releases their 2007 figures our solar watts per capita will be about 6.4. That still trails where San Rafael was a year ago, but it should be good enough to get us into the Bay Area Top 10 for cities with a population of over 50,000.

But if you add in the 1,600 kW that Google is installing, the 480 kW that Microsoft brought online in 2006, and the 90 kW from the new City parking structure, then I think that Mountain View has to be THE most solar medium or large city in Northern California, based on watts per capita.