Thanks to one of our favorite informers, Felicity Barringer, whose past stories we have occasionally riffed on, for this piece in today’s Dot Earth section of the New York Times website (click the graph above to go to the source, and yes it counts as a non-subscriber article read):

From California to New Jersey, the summer sun was hot this year — and so was the solar industry. While the business of solar energy is still small enough and young enough to record firsts at the fearsome pace of a toddler, the milestones are getting more substantial.

For instance, in mid-August California’s utility-scale solar generating stations combined to put out the same amount of energy — one gigawatt — as a substantial nuclear or coal-fired power plant. That moment occurred between 5 and 6 p.m., coinciding with peak demand, associated with the need to cool indoor air.

As the energy-related Web site Earth Techling pointed out, the California System Operator only records the solar energy coming from utility-scale facilities, and there is another gigawatt of installed power on rooftops around the state.