This morning, July 8, CleanTechnica reported that Germany’s accumulative installed solar across the country produced 23.9 gigawatts (GWs)—roughly 40 percent of the country’s electric needs during its peak energy use. It’s a remarkable figure considering the nation’s northern location and blasts away California’s solar records, which recently have been surpassing 2 GWs at peak. It also far surpasses the cumulative solar power production across the entire U.S.

“A few hours ago, solar output climbed above the 22.68 GW solar power output record Germany set in April. Not long after, it climbed above the 23.4 GW solar power output record set in June,” observed CleanTechnica’s Zachary Shahan. He was watching SMA Solar Technology’s Performance of Photovoltaics in Germany’s monitoring site, which provides live production monitoring. “Germany’s peak electricity demand at midday is about 60 GW, around 1:45pm, solar power was providing about 40 percent of the country’s electricity demand. Impressive,” he added.

Shahan went on to say that between 1.3 million and 1.4 million German PV arrays helped push the mark up further. “About 8.5 million people live in buildings where solar power systems are used to produce electricity or heat,” he said.

In comparison, across the U.S., the latest figures from the Solar Energy Industries Association show that the entire U.S. now has more than 8.5 gigawatts of solar installed, which is enough to power about 1.4 million U.S. homes. And while 2013 is anticipated to be the biggest year yet for new solar installations in the U.S., with 4.4 GWs of new PV coming online and the 938 megawatts of concentrating solar power anticipated to come online by the end of the year, the country will still be far behind Germany. At that point the U.S. is likely to have 13.8 gigawatts of solar online. Germany already has 33.9 gigawatts of solar installed as of May 2013, according to the German Energy Blog.

Meanwhile the U.S.’s most populous and also most solar friendly state, California, can now produce more than 2.0 gigawatts of solar power when combining photovoltaics and solar thermal or concentrating solar power, according to the state’s Independent System Operator (ISO) Renewables Watch. Solar thermal systems are peaking after PV systems.

That number is less than 10 percent of what Germany’s producing despite California being larger at 163,695 square miles compared to Germany’s 137,847 square miles. California also has a much richer solar resource getting up to 2.5 kilowatts hours per square meter in its desert regions, than Germany, which gets up to roughly 1.6 kilowatt hours per square meter in its southernmost regions. Bottom-line, the U.S. has some catching up to do.