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We all a know the sun does not shine on us all equally. This is the reality that has long slowed the growth of solar power. Where you live in the country, or even in your city will vary considerably with the same array of photovoltaic solar panels. What matters is the precise amount of sunlight that hits your roof. While we all know that San Diego gets more sunny days than Seattle, what about one neighborhood of San San Diego compared to another? What about one block of Seattle compared to the next block? Kenneth Westrick, the CEO of the renewable mapping company 3Tier says “Without that knowledge, renewables can be a bit of a crap shoot.”

Thanks to companies like 3Tier and  other city sponsored programs like CH2M in San Francisco, the Solar and Wind Industry could benefit from better data. The engineering company CH2M Hill, in an an effort to resolve barriers to Solar Development, is now joining forces with the U.S. Department of Energy to provide Internet solar maps of 25 American cities. With Google Earth technology to chart precise solar potential of neighborhoods, rooftop by rooftop, the company has just cpmpleted the mapping of all of San Francisco. Residents interested in Solar can simply now to enter their address and take a solar reading of their home address. According to Gavin Newsom, the city’s deep-green mayor says: “People in San Francisco think we don’t have any solar potential but the map shows we have a lot more sun than you’d believe.” To use or learn about this new program click on the San Francisco solar map website here: sf.solarmap.org. You will get a Google Earth view of the entire city. The site shows that CH2M Hill has already labeled all 925 existing solar electric systems throughout the city which include commercial sites, government sites, and also all of the residential sites. The site truly stands on it’s merits when you enter in any address in San Francisco as the Google Earth camera shifts to a rooftop view of the business or home with data on the size of the roof, the estimated solar energy potential, with the electricity that could be produced and the electric bill savings. Also estimated is the amount of carbon that can be saved per location. One other critical feature is the site’s abiulity to provide estimates of what it would cost you to convert — with the federal, state and city incentives factored in.

Johanna Partin says “It’s a one stop shop for solar power”. As San Francisco’s renewable energy program manger she makes the case that “If you can’t get solar power with the help of the CH2M Hill map, you’re just not trying very hard.”

Other companies are even going global in conducting such solar surveys. One to keep an eye on is Seattle-based 3Tier as they are steadily mapping the solar, wind and hydro power potential of the entire planet. They call this their Remapping the World Initiative. They offer utilities and businesses to use the 3Tier website to research the best locations for wind power projects, and offer the opprotunity for ordinary citizens to check the solar potential of their home address. As this is just the beginning of these solar and wind targeted research programs we are yet to see how much all will be helped in an energy hungry world. If San Francisco is any indication, and as the focus shifts from fossil fuels to renewable options, the data will make many decisions, and savings, easy.

San Francisco already hosts hardware producing 6.5mW of solar power. Most of the power is from a relatively small number of big commercial and public / city projects. Governor Newsom has goals for 31mW of solar by 2012, which is part part of a bigger plan to provide 50mW of total renewable energy by the same year including wind, hydro, etc. Part of Newsom’s task is in identifying the 1,500 business that have the biggest solar potential in San Francisco. Those who qualify can earn a special incentive if they employ graduates of San Francisco’s workforce training program, which is part of the mayor’s push for green jobs. “Everyone’s talking about green jobs, but to say is not to do,’ he says. “We want to actually do this.’

The imperative shift to renewable energy, especially solar and wind, won’t happen on it’s own — it needs front leading government policies and state of the art technological innovations. One example of this is solar mapping.