Smoke From California Wildfires Dimmed Solar Energy in 2020

Wildfire smoke fills the sky as a man and his dog walk in Laguna Hills, California on Sept. 16, 2020. Leonard Ortiz / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images Why you can trust us Founded in 2005 as an Ohio-based environmental newspaper, EcoWatch is a digital platform dedicated to publishing quality, science-based content on environmental issues, causes, and solutions. In September of 2020, the smoke from major wildfires in California made the skies so dark that the state’s solar power production was reduced by 10 to 30 percent during peak hours, according to a National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) study. For several days during the wildfires, solar energy forecasts significantly overestimated the amount of power that would be able to be generated by the sun, a NCAR press release said. “The key takeaway from this research is that wildfire…

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