State-by-State Solar Ranking 2026: Installed Capacity, and Where Residential Led

The Top Nine States by Installed Capacity

Per SEIA data compiled through June 2026 and reported by BGR: California 55,510 MW, Texas 53,568 MW, Florida 21,968 MW, Arizona 11,751 MW, North Carolina 10,093 MW, Illinois 8,290 MW, Nevada 8,244 MW, New York 8,226 MW, and Virginia 7,841 MW. The Cool Down independently corroborates the top two figures specifically, California barely leading Texas at 55,510 MW versus 53,568 MW, though it traces to the same underlying SEIA-via-BGR data chain rather than a fully independent third source.

Why This Is Not a Residential-Only Ranking

The nine-state table above is total installed solar capacity across every segment, utility, commercial, and residential combined, not a residential-only figure. SEIA’s own site remains blocked to direct fetch, and no other reachable source this cycle publishes a full state-by-state residential-only ranking. Anyone using this table to argue for where the most residential rooftop capacity specifically sits should treat it as a proxy at best, and look to the residential-specific signal below instead.

Nevada’s Outsized Share

Nevada sits seventh on the absolute-capacity list at 8,244 MW, behind five states with more total installed capacity. Its share of the state’s own electricity mix tells a different story: 33.5% of Nevada’s electricity comes from solar, the highest share of any state in the top nine. That is a reminder that total installed megawatts and per-state electricity-mix share are two different rankings, and a state placing lower on the first can still lead on the second.

Where Residential Specifically Led

Set alongside the total-capacity table, the most directly residential-specific data point comes from this site’s existing, separately sourced research, originally attributed to SEIA via pv-magazine-usa: Florida led the country in residential installed capacity specifically during the first quarter of 2026, its strongest quarter since the fourth quarter of 2024, while Texas ranked in the top 10 nationally for new capacity added over the same period, and more than 75% of one national dealer network’s sales volume came from California, Florida, and Texas combined. This paragraph’s figures are reused from this site’s existing research and were not independently re-verified this specific session, since pv-magazine-usa remained blocked to direct fetch again this cycle.

What the State Spread Means for Where You Buy Appointments

California, Texas, and Florida are not just the top three states on the total-capacity table, they are also where residential activity specifically concentrates, per the data above. That concentration matters for appointment-buying decisions the same way it matters for installer footprint: a vendor with real coverage across all three states is covering the markets where both total capacity and residential-specific momentum actually sit, not just the states with the biggest raw numbers on a chart. This site’s price-per-watt statistics page breaks out how cost varies across these same states, useful context for the same markets covered here.

The Numbers

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• BGR, nine states with the most solar panels, citing SEIA data through June 2026
• The Cool Down, California and Texas solar capacity, corroborating the same SEIA-via-BGR data
• SEIA, via pv-magazine-usa, on Q1 2026 residential state leadership

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