Data coverage by state

There is no national registry of residential solar — each system is permitted by one of ~20,000 local authorities and interconnected by one of ~3,000 utilities. PanelCensus compiles what states and utilities publish, so completeness varies a lot by state. This scorecard is honest about where.

Dataset updated September 2026 . Coverage reflects which public programs currently feed each state.

Reporting program

states well covered

Partial

some program data

Sparse

baseline-only holes

How we grade it. Every state carries three thin national baseline layers (USGS utility-scale, NREL community-solar, a Google-derived rooftop layer). We measure primary coverage — installations from a dedicated state or utility program on top of those baselines: Reporting program ≥ 5,000 primary records, Partial 500–4,999, Sparse under 500. A sparse state (e.g. GA, TN, IN, SC) is a data gap, not low adoption — its market penetration here is understated until we ingest its programs.

Scorecard

Every state, ranked by records

State	Coverage	Recorded installs	% homes	Satellite est. (2018)	Completeness
California	Reporting program	2,413,296	16.6%	1,242,151	✓ complete
Arizona	Reporting program	375,282	11.9%	190,855	✓ complete
Texas	Reporting program	350,101	2.9%	109,099	✓ complete
New Jersey	Reporting program	232,326	6.2%	165,727	✓ complete
New York	Reporting program	223,144	2.6%	169,832	✓ complete
Massachusetts	Reporting program	159,720	5.3%	129,991	✓ complete
Colorado	Reporting program	116,390	4.6%	63,491	✓ complete
Illinois	Reporting program	115,165	2.1%	31,797	✓ complete
Maryland	Reporting program	110,805	4.3%	77,047	✓ complete
New Mexico	Reporting program	68,507	7.2%	26,657	✓ complete
Connecticut	Reporting program	63,735	4.2%	56,103	✓ complete
Utah	Reporting program	48,520	4.1%	45,573	✓ complete
Louisiana	Reporting program	41,418	2.0%	26,183	✓ complete
Florida	Reporting program	38,748	0.38%	109,886	✓ complete
District of Columbia	Reporting program	38,588	10.8%	7,678	✓ complete
Vermont	Reporting program	35,393	10.5%	12,046	✓ complete
Nevada	Reporting program	31,593	2.4%	84,366	✓ complete
Pennsylvania	Reporting program	24,332	0.42%	52,284	✓ complete
Minnesota	Reporting program	23,799	0.94%	9,485	✓ complete
Wisconsin	Reporting program	22,780	0.83%	12,162	✓ complete
Maine	Reporting program	22,416	3.0%	5,763	✓ complete
Virginia	Reporting program	18,459	0.51%	18,254	✓ complete
Oregon	Reporting program	17,013	0.93%	33,816	✓ complete
North Carolina	Reporting program	16,195	0.34%	10,493	✓ complete
New Hampshire	Reporting program	11,060	1.7%	9,698	✓ complete
Delaware	Reporting program	9,550	2.1%	7,781	✓ complete
Washington	Reporting program	9,289	0.28%	35,114	✓ complete
Rhode Island	Reporting program	5,370	1.1%	8,068	✓ complete
Ohio	Reporting program	5,254	0.10%	14,246	✓ complete
Missouri	Partial	4,428	0.16%†	22,207	20% of est.
Hawaii	Partial	3,070	0.54%†	50,274	6% of est.
Arkansas	Partial	2,433	0.18%†	4,446	55% of est.
Kentucky	Partial	959	0.05%†	1,337	72% of est.
Michigan	Partial	801	0.02%†	16,412	5% of est.
Georgia	Sparse	681	0.02%†	9,876	7% of est.
Tennessee	Sparse	509	0.02%†	7,845	6% of est.
Indiana	Sparse	240	0.01%†	9,476	3% of est.
South Carolina	Sparse	232	0.01%†	28,123	1% of est.
Iowa	Sparse	77	0.01%†	2,627	3% of est.
Nebraska	Sparse	61	0.01%†	1,573	4% of est.
Alaska	Sparse	60	0.02%†	195	31% of est.
Kansas	Sparse	57	0.00%†	4,500	1% of est.
Oklahoma	Sparse	47	0.00%†	3,541	1% of est.
Mississippi	Sparse	46	0.00%†	1,879	2% of est.
Alabama	Sparse	43	0.00%†	2,676	2% of est.
Montana	Sparse	29	0.01%†	3,499	1% of est.
Idaho	Sparse	27	0.00%†	5,211	1% of est.
PR	Sparse	23	0.00%†	—	—
Wyoming	Sparse	9	0.00%†	1,258	1% of est.
South Dakota	Sparse	7	0.00%†	537	1% of est.
West Virginia	Sparse	7	0.00%†	2,148	0% of est.
North Dakota	Sparse	1	0.00%†	436	0% of est.

% homes = recorded installs ÷ housing units (U.S. Census ACS 5-Year, B25001). Rows marked † are under-reported — their public-data coverage is incomplete, so the figure is a floor and the true rate is higher (e.g. Hawaii's real rooftop penetration is ~35%, not the 0.5% we've so far recorded). Completenesscompares recorded installs to Stanford DeepSolar-3M's count of PV arrays detected from 2018 satellite imagery: “complete” means recorded meets or exceeds that 2018 baseline (well-covered, and usually far above it after years of growth); a low “% of est.” (Hawaii 6%, Georgia 7%) is a genuine data gap, not low adoption.