Where Did All the Solar Go? Calculating Total U.S. Solar Energy Production

Good data can be hard to come by. Let’s take solar production data. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), solar electricity production facilities — including photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) — produced a total of roughly 1,800 GWh in 2011. That’s a 50 percent increase over 2010. Even so, as a percent of total energy produced, the number is so small, in Figure 1 (below), it’s easy to confuse solar energy production with the horizontal axis.

Where Did All the Solar Go? Calculating Total U.S. Solar Energy Production