Solar Statistics & Benchmarks
Sourced solar market data, cost benchmarks, and industry statistics, every figure cited to its origin.
Residential Electricity Rate Increase Statistics by State 2026
The average US residential electricity price was 17.30 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, ranging from 8.20 cents in North Dakota to 35.72 cents in Hawaii, according to the Energy Information Administration. The broader all-sector average, which blends residential with commercial and industrial rates, sat lower at 13.63 cents per kilowatt-hour the same year. Prices rose 13% in nominal terms from 2022 to 2025, and the EIA expects them to keep outpacing inflation through 2026. A 2025-dated industry summary citing EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook puts the 2025-to-2026 increase at 13% to 18%, varying by region, with already-expensive regions including the Pacific, Middle Atlantic, and New England named as likely to see above-average increases. US consumers spent an average of $1,760 on electricity in 2023, the most recent year EIA has published that specific household figure.
Read more →Rooftop Solar Market Penetration by State: What Share of Homes Actually Have Solar
By the end of 2024, distributed solar had crossed a saturation threshold of more than 100 watts per capita, roughly one in every 25 households, in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s “The State(s) of Distributed Solar, 2024 Update.” Minnesota led at 211 watts per household, followed by Illinois at 147, Iowa at 103, and Wisconsin at roughly 46, close to one in every 100 Wisconsin households. The figures on this page come from ILSR, not Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the publisher most often cited for state-level solar saturation data. LBNL’s own site was not reachable during this research, and no available source could confirm LBNL’s specific state-by-state figures directly, so the numbers below carry that named-source caveat rather than being presented as LBNL’s own breakdown.
Read more →Solar Workforce Diversity Statistics 2026: What the Census Shows Beyond the Jobs Headcount
This page does not include a wage or salary figure. IREC’s National Solar Jobs Census demographics data, the source behind every number below, reports representation percentages by category, not pay, so a wage claim in this space would be unsourced. What IREC does document: women made up 29% of the solar workforce in 2024, up from 26% in 2019, and Hispanic or Latino workers made up 24%, up 7 points over the same span. Black and Asian workers each made up 8% of the workforce. Veterans made up 8% of the solar workforce against 5% of the overall US workforce, and workers under age 30 made up 31% against 22% nationally. The 2024 Census counted 280,119 solar workers, 464,053 combined with the storage workforce, across an industry where California, Florida, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts are the top five employment states.
Read more →Solar Property Tax Exemption Statistics: Which States Actually Exempt Solar From Assessed Value
34 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC currently have a property tax exemption in effect for residential solar systems, according to Palmetto’s October 2025 guide, which names both SEIA and DSIRE as its sources. A separate, older figure from EcoWatch, whose page discloses it was last updated in May 2022, puts the count at 36 states. The gap between 36 and 34 plus PR and DC most likely reflects real policy change over roughly three years, states adding or letting exemptions lapse, rather than a research error, so this page leads with the fresher Palmetto figure. No dedicated government database publishes this count directly. DSIRE, the federally supported incentive database most often cited for this kind of state-by-state policy question, does not maintain a standalone property tax exemption map in its static summary collection, confirmed by checking that collection directly, so every figure on this page traces to a secondary source naming SEIA and DSIRE rather than to a government page itself.
Read more →Home Resale Value Impact Statistics: How Much More a Solar Home Sells For
Zillow’s original 2019 study found homes with solar sold for 4.1% more than comparable homes without it, roughly $10,000 higher on average. A 2025 study from SolarReviews, analyzing more than 400 solar and non-solar home sales matched on sale date, size, and location across 36 states and 62 cities, found a larger premium: 6.9% more, roughly $25,000 higher, close to $29,000 for median-valued homes. The 6.9% figure should be attributed to the 2025 SolarReviews study specifically, not to Zillow directly. SolarReviews describes its own methodology as replicating Zillow’s original approach using Zillow-sourced comparable-sales data, not as a Zillow-authored finding. Read together, the two studies show the same relationship, solar homes sell for more, holding up and growing over six years: from 4.1% in 2019 to 6.9% in 2025.
Read more →Solar Permitting Timeline Statistics: Average Days to Permit by State
New York, Nevada, and Texas post the fastest median solar permit approval times among the states with enough data to rank, at 25, 27, and 28 days respectively, according to a solar-industry analysis citing NREL’s SolarTRACE platform. Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and North Carolina sit at the slow end, in a 48-to-64-plus-day range the source itself calls approximate estimates. Only 16 of roughly 46 states have enough permitting volume to produce a reliable state-level median; the rest are excluded for minimal solar deployment or insufficient data. Nationally, permit-to-inspection time has fallen from a median of 47.5 days under traditional review to 33 days using the SolarAPP+ instant-permitting platform, a 31% reduction, alongside roughly 29% fewer inspection failures. An earlier measurement from SolarAPP+’s own 2021 launch data showed a smaller gap, 45 days down to 32, a different report vintage that should not be blended with the more recent 47.5-to-33 figure.
Read more →Solar Interconnection Queue Statistics 2026
2,061 gigawatts of total generation and storage capacity sat in US interconnection queues awaiting grid connection as of the end of 2025, down 10% from 2024’s total but still well below the peak of nearly 2,600 gigawatts at the end of 2023, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Queued Up: 2026 Edition, reported by the American Public Power Association. Solar alone accounts for 773 gigawatts of that total, a 19% year-over-year decrease, with more than 750 gigawatts of requests withdrawn during 2025 alone. Only 32% of queued solar capacity has a drafted or executed interconnection agreement. The wait is long even for projects that stay in line. Median time from an interconnection request to a signed agreement ran well over 3 years in 2025, and time to commercial operation exceeds 5 years in the regions with available data. Withdrawal rates remain above 40% even after a project has signed its interconnection agreement, and 75% of capacity that entered queues between 2000 and 2020 had withdrawn by the end of 2025.
Read more →EV Adoption and Solar Attach Correlation Statistics
25% of EV owners also own a rooftop solar system, compared with just 8% of non-EV owners, according to NREL research, reported independently and identically by two separate trade-press outlets. The study, led by NREL researcher Shivam Sharda with UC Santa Barbara and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and funded by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office, is titled “The Electric Vehicles-Solar Photovoltaics Nexus: Driving Cross-Sectoral Adoption of Sustainable Technologies.” The underlying data comes from a 2018 survey of 869 households in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a 2022 follow-up analysis using national Residential Energy Consumption Survey data, not a fresh nationally representative 2026 study. The correlation is real and twice-confirmed, but it describes an association, not proof that owning an EV causes someone to add solar, or the reverse.
Read more →Solar Consumer Complaint Statistics 2026: Where Complaints Escalate
In April 2026, the Texas Attorney General opened an investigation into four residential solar installers, Freedom Forever, Sunrun, Lone Star Solar Services, and CAM Solar, over deceptive door to door sales tactics. The four companies are collectively named in more than 100 complaints filed directly with the AG’s office, plus thousands more filed online, and the investigation’s civil investigative demands require each company to turn over its savings claim substantiation, warranty terms, and service plan documentation. No national body publishes a single BBB or FTC style aggregate complaint count for the solar industry the way one exists for some other sectors. What exists instead is complaint data at the point where it escalates past a review site: this AG investigation, and a separate Momentum Solar TCPA class action settlement of $20 million to $30 million covering unsolicited telemarketing calls placed between March 5, 2015, and January 2, 2025.
Read more →New Construction Solar Statistics 2026: How Many Builders Build Solar In
Only 10% of US home builders report including onsite solar energy on half or more of the homes they build, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ 2024 Green and Resilient Single Family Homes SmartMarket Brief. That national figure hides a wide regional split: 31% of builders in the West build solar into half or more of their homes, against 21% in the Northeast and just 3% in both the Midwest and the South. California adds its own regulatory layer on top of that builder behavior. The state’s 2022 Energy Code update expanded solar and battery storage standards for new residential construction, applying to any permit application submitted on or after January 1, 2023, on top of the state’s existing rooftop solar mandate for new homes.
Read more →Solar Panel Recycling and End-of-Life Waste Statistics (2026)
IRENA’s July 2026 report on solar panel end-of-life management projects global cumulative photovoltaic waste exceeding 12 million tonnes by 2035 and topping 200 million tonnes by 2050, with annual waste surpassing 25 million tonnes a year by 2050, equivalent to more than 400 gigawatts of retired capacity. Those figures come from IRENA’s 1.5°C Scenario, a specific climate-aligned deployment pathway, not a flat base-case forecast, and are drawn from a solar trade press outlet naming the report directly, since IRENA’s own report text was not readable this cycle. Every one of those figures is a global total, not a US-specific count. What is recoverable from that waste stream carries real value: IRENA projects $810 million a year in recovered material value by 2030, growing to $6 billion by 2040 and more than $20 billion a year by 2050, led by aluminum at roughly half the 2050 material mix by weight and silver at about a third.
Read more →Solar Panel Degradation Rate Statistics: How Much Output Panels Lose Over 25 Years
NREL’s PV Fleet Performance Data Initiative, a Department of Energy-funded research program launched in 2019, found a median annual performance loss of 0.75% across roughly 2,200 solar installations and nearly 19,000 inverters, based on three years of data collected starting in 2019 and published June 27, 2023. That figure, described in DOE’s own account of the initiative, is the most directly sourced degradation number available for the US fleet as a whole. A reported 2024 NREL update found the rate splits sharply by climate, 0.88% a year in hot climate zones against 0.48% a year in cool ones, drawn from an expanded dataset of roughly 7.2 gigawatts across about 1,700 sites, though this specific figure comes from a search result summary that could not be independently loaded from NREL directly this cycle, so it should be treated as reported rather than confirmed. At the low end, high-efficiency N-type solar cells show light-induced degradation as low as 0.25% a year, with many N-type panels warrantied to guarantee 90% or more of their original rated output across a 25 to 30 year life.
Read more →Battery Storage Cost Per kWh Trend Statistics 2026
The battery storage pricing on this page comes from two battery-hardware vendor blogs, not from BloombergNEF, NREL, or Wood Mackenzie directly, since none of those three research bodies had a reachable primary page this cycle. Treat every figure below as a directional industry estimate, not a confirmed research-grade statistic. With that caveat first: residential battery storage runs roughly $300 to $600 per kWh fully installed in 2026 by one vendor’s pricing bands, while a second vendor’s year-over-year table puts 2026 residential pricing at $380 to $550 per kWh, down from $450 to $650 in 2025, a 15% to 18% decline. Commercial and industrial storage runs lower, and utility-scale lower still: one source puts 2026 utility-scale battery energy storage at $150 to $300 per kWh, the other’s year-over-year table shows utility-scale falling from $180 to $280 in 2025 to $150 to $240 in 2026, a 17% to 21% decline. Both vendors also cite a longer-run decline without a dated source: one claims a nearly 45% price drop over the past year, the other cites BloombergNEF by name for an 80% decline over the past decade, neither with a linkable report attached.
Read more →State-by-State Solar Ranking 2026: Installed Capacity, and Where Residential Led
Per SEIA data compiled through June 2026, California leads all states in total installed solar capacity at 55,510 MW, followed closely by Texas at 53,568 MW, Florida at 21,968 MW, Arizona at 11,751 MW, and North Carolina at 10,093 MW rounding out the top five. Illinois, Nevada, New York, and Virginia complete a nine-state list, each between roughly 7,800 and 8,300 MW. That ranking covers total installed capacity across every segment, utility, commercial, and residential combined, not a residential-only breakdown, since no reachable source currently publishes a full state-by-state residential-only ranking. The best available residential-specific signal points elsewhere: Florida led the country in residential installed capacity specifically during the first quarter of 2026, its strongest quarter since the end of 2024, while Texas ranked in the top 10 nationally for new capacity added. Nevada is worth a second look on its own: despite ranking seventh on the total-capacity list, it draws 33.5% of its electricity from solar, the highest share of any state on the list.
Read more →Solar Panel Price-Per-Watt Trend Statistics 2026
The 2026 national average residential solar price is approximately $2.60 per watt before incentives, down from $3.16 per watt ten years ago, based on EnergySage’s marketplace-quote data. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s most recent data, cited by EnergySage, puts the national median cash-purchase price meaningfully higher at $3.50 per watt, a gap that likely reflects EnergySage’s quote-shopping sample skewing toward more competitively priced offers than the broader market. State averages spread widely: Arizona posts the lowest at $2.20 per watt and Alabama the highest at $3.84, with Tennessee close behind at $3.35.
Read more →Solar Loan Interest Rate and APR Statistics 2026
The median quoted solar loan rate on EnergySage’s marketplace is 7.5%, with a median loan term of 25 years, though the actual rate a homeowner gets depends on credit score, lender, and whether the loan is secured or unsecured. A low advertised rate can still be the more expensive loan once fees are counted, since solar loans commonly bury an origination or dealer fee, averaging roughly 22% of the loan, inside a lower headline rate, which is why APR, not the advertised rate alone, is the only apples-to-apples comparison. Credit Human, Climate First Bank, Dividend Solar, Atmos Financial, and EnFin Financing were the lenders most frequently quoted on EnergySage’s platform as of 2025.
Read more →PACE Financing Volume Statistics 2026: Commercial and Residential Totals
Commercial PACE financing totals roughly $13.5 billion across 3,837 projects from the program’s 2009 inception through December 2025, while residential PACE totals roughly $9.1 billion across 371,000 home upgrades from 2015 through December 2023, according to PACENation’s own market data. Neither figure isolates solar specifically: commercial PACE breaks down as 55% energy efficiency, 17% renewable energy, and 15% mixed-use projects, and residential PACE breaks down as 32% energy efficiency, 29% renewable energy, and 28% resilience, so the renewable-energy share is the closest available ceiling on solar’s share of PACE volume, not a solar-specific number. PACENation’s published data also does not break volume out state by state.
Read more →Commercial and C&I Solar Statistics 2026: The Segment Residential Coverage Misses
Commercial and industrial (C&I) solar grew 6% in 2025, adding 2,345 MWdc, even as the residential market began contracting. SEIA forecasts a 13% decline for C&I in 2026, driven largely by California’s regulatory changes, but projects the segment returning to roughly 6% annual growth from 2027 through 2030 as retail electricity rates keep rising and C&I economics lean less on the residential federal tax credit that expired at the start of 2026. That is a different trajectory than residential solar, which SEIA forecasts down 18% to 21% for the full year.
Read more →US Solar Company Count and Market Concentration Statistics 2026: How Many Installers Are Left After the Bankruptcy Wave
No public source publishes a current, exact count of how many US residential solar companies remain in business, or a formal market-concentration ratio, as of this writing. The closest sourced proxies are the scale of the shutdown wave and the resulting workforce contraction: more than 100 US solar companies have filed for bankruptcy or shut down since 2023, a pace described as the largest in roughly 20 years and reaching as high as Freedom Forever, the #2 US residential installer, and the US solar workforce fell to more than 280,000 workers by late 2025, down from a record 464,053 in the 2024 National Solar Jobs Census. Those two figures describe how much the market has thinned and consolidated, not how many companies are left standing.
Read more →Multifamily and Community Solar Statistics 2026
Roughly half of US households, 49%, and nearly half of US businesses, 48%, cannot access rooftop solar at all, mainly due to renting or roof space that will not work, according to NREL research cited by Solar.com. Community solar exists specifically to reach that population: Solar.com reports the model is established in at least 26 states, with 14 states plus Washington DC carrying specific policy frameworks that recognize shared renewable energy, and the segment growing from just 66 megawatts added in 2014 toward a projected 3 gigawatts of capacity within the next few years, figures Solar.com reports without a named primary source and this guide could not independently verify.
Read more →Solar Market Statistics (2026)
US residential solar installations are forecast to contract 18% to 21% in 2026 after the Section 25D federal tax credit expired, and customer acquisition cost is projected to spike 40% to $0.84 per watt, up from a five-year low of $0.60 per watt in 2025. This page collects the sourced installation, CAC, and financing-mix numbers behind those figures, with every stat linked to its primary source below.
Read more →Solar Company Bankruptcies, 2024 to 2026 (Maintained List)
More than 100 US solar companies have filed for bankruptcy or shut down since 2023, including Sunnova and Mosaic (June 2025), PosiGen (Chapter 11, November 2025), and Freedom Forever, the #2 US residential installer, which filed Chapter 11 on April 15, 2026. This page tracks the major filings with dates, details, and sources, and it gets updated as new filings happen.
Read more →Solar Sales Benchmarks (2026)
Solar close rates run 8% to 17% depending on lead source and appointment quality, no-show rates on booked solar appointments run 30% to 40% even for paid leads, and per-watt commissions typically split $0.05 to $0.15 for setters and $0.20 to $0.50 for closers. This page collects the sourced sales-economics benchmarks behind those figures, and marks the handful that come from a single publisher rather than a cross-industry survey.
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