Winter 2011

California Solar Initiative Web Site Re-Designed

The California Solar Statistics web site has been enhanced and redesigned. This site is the California Solar Initiative's public program reporting tool, providing dynamic tables and figures to track the status and progress of the general market solar program.

New highlights on California Solar Statistics include:

• Smarter site navigation: find the solar information you need quickly and easily.
• View Solar Statistics, a drop-down feature where you can access a menu of detailed tables and figures showing: Program Totals, Geographical Totals (By City, County and Zip Code), Monthly Statistics, Cost Data, Application Status, Applications by Customer Sector, and Progress towards Program Goals.
• Robust data filters for every table or figure, letting you immediately see a figure with your filters applied, or download the filtered data set.
• Previously unavailable data representations; specifically, information regarding the installed cost of PV systems: Cost Distribution, Cost by Quarter, and Cost by System Size. These new figures are among those found under the View Solar Statistics menu at the top of the left hand navigation bar of the new site.
• A powerful new Find a Contractor feature allowing users to enter their location and find a list of solar contractors in their area, complete with contact information, number of projects, average project size, and average cost/watt for completed systems in the specified area. Each of these columns can be sorted to assist users in finding contractors who best fit their specific needs. (Note that contact information is pulled from the Go Solar, California! contractor database, which is not complete for all solar contractors.)

The site is updated every Wednesday with publicly available data from the California Solar Initiative project application database. The weekly export from the program database is filtered for data errors, then used to generate the tables and figures. The working data set is always available in raw form for researchers to download directly, and includes dozens of additional data fields.
The new web site design integrates with the main CSI program website, GoSolarCalifornia.ca.gov. Both sites display summary statistics in a new feature called "California Leads the Nation,” which pulls together publicly available data from the CSI Program, as well as other solar programs throughout the state.

As in previous versions of the site, you can always click and zoom in on a particular figure to see a portion of the figure up close. Holding your cursor over any part of a figure reveals the data for that bar or line. All data is always viewable and downloadable in table format.

The new site is accessible via the following URL: http://www.californiasolarstatistics.ca.gov

This web site was made possible by a collaborative effort of the California Solar Initiative Program Administrators, the CPUC, and web site consultant Energy Solutions.