In the fall of 2020, smoke blanketed most of the contiguous United States as megafires scorched swaths of forests in the West. The haze blocked some of the Sun’s rays from reaching nearby solar panels, dampening California’s solar energy production in the first 2 weeks of September by one third.
To meet the country’s growing energy demand, the U.S. government is seeking to quickly ramp up solar energy production from 3% to 45% by 2050. Over the coming decades, wildfires like those that rampaged in 2020 are expected to burn longer, larger, and throughout more of the year than ever before.
“This could be good news for photovoltaic solar production.”
Scientists are finding in an ongoing study that despite the haze from far-off blazes, enough indirect sunlight was available to fuel the nation’s burgeoning solar panel industry in 2020.
“This could be good news…