I've never seen solar installations reported as anything other than nameplate.
I don't like it. I do like renewable power, but this kind of puffery makes people think that we're right on the verge of building an all-renewable electrical grid. Which we are not.
We could have a zero-emissions electrical grid in ten years, by embracing a nuclear baseline, putting in a bunch of solar and wind where it makes sense, and adding some battery storage to soak up the intermittency of the latter. But when people read solar by the nameplate, they think it's 7x cheaper than it is, and try to compare that number to nuclear, rather than the actual one.
I don't like it. I do like renewable power, but this kind of puffery makes people think that we're right on the verge of building an all-renewable electrical grid. Which we are not.
We could have a zero-emissions electrical grid in ten years, by embracing a nuclear baseline, putting in a bunch of solar and wind where it makes sense, and adding some battery storage to soak up the intermittency of the latter. But when people read solar by the nameplate, they think it's 7x cheaper than it is, and try to compare that number to nuclear, rather than the actual one.