New data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that small-scale solar usage is increasing among homeowners and commercial buildings and that the lion’s share of that usage is happening in the West.
According to a recent survey, as of 2020, 3.7% of single-family homes are generating electricity from rooftop solar. In 2018 that number stood at 1.6%.
The Western region of the United States has hopped on the solar bandwagon at a higher rate than other regions, though the Northeast is not far behind. The Western region, defined by the 2202 census, includes: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, and Hawaii, and is home to nearly 79 million residents.
In the West, 8.9% of single-family homes use small-scale solar generation. Commercially, 3.8% of buildings have also installed solar generation.
Most rooftop solar generation is in California, though Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission are putting California's leadership in solar deployment at risk by threatening to eliminate a key incentive for rooftop solar that reimburses Californians for extra electricity their solar panels provide back to the grid.
The Northeast has the second largest percentage of homes with rooftop solar, at 4.7%, and 2.5% of commercial buildings. This region includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts are among the leading states for small-scale solar capacity despite having a lower percentage of sunny days than other regions. However, these states all have long-standing policies that encourage renewable and clean energy investment, that has boosted the growth of rooftop solar.
An EIA survey also showed that many other factors, such as the year a home was built, household income, or if a dwelling was homeowner occupied (as opposed to rental), also influenced whether it had rooftop solar.
Concerning commercial facilities, government-owned buildings were more likely to have solar power.
According to the 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, 26% of U.S. households used electricity as the only source of energy. The states with the largest share of all-electric homes were Florida, at 77% of homes, and Hawaii, 72%. Interestingly, neither state ranked high in their use of solar. These states could easily benefit from more solar energy by allowing residents to choose their energy supplier and with incentive programs to install rooftop solar and battery storage in their homes.
Only 1.7% of households in the South have rooftop solar. These are also states that frequently experience weather-related power outages. Much of this is due to policy shortcomings that state legislators and regulators could address by opening local and regional electricity markets to more competition from the private sector and letting consumer preferences determine the future of power generation.