San Francisco Solar Map Web Site Almost Ready
A Web site that lets San Francisco homeowners type in their address and get information on how much money they could save using solar power will be completely operational this month.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports the site will make the City by the Bay the first in the world to be completely mapped for its solar power potential. By entering their address, residents or business owners can get an estimate of the cost to install panels, and the savings they could generate, the paper reports.
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The new web site, called sf.solarmap.org, includes more than 158,000 residential buildings and almost 17,000 business structures. Parts of the site are already running, including a set of solar facts for the city that detail the number of installations, and the amounts of energy and money saved so far. The city has set an ambitious goal of having 10,000 solar power systems installed by 2010.
San Fransisco has been a leader in innovative approaches to solar energy and this site represents another step in that leadership. It will be interesting to see if other cities start to use this approach, and if it can be adapted to other forms of energy.
Photo credit: brothergrimm on Flickr, via a Creative Commons License.
Anything that makes it more accessible for people to find out about solar energy has to be a good thing. Those Californians are way ahead of us here in England when it comes to this sort of thing.