Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How U.S. residential solar is sold and marketed, and the evidence behind it: how many homes have solar and how many install it each year; what systems cost and how loans, leases and dealer fees work; what the listed solar companies spend on sales and marketing and how they sell; how many installers there are and what they earn; who buys solar and what persuades them; the FTC, CFPB and state rules on solar ads, testimonials and door-to-door sales, including Florida's; and where six popular numbers came from.
Sunrun spent $709.3 million on sales and marketing in 2025, about $6,070 per net new customer by our calculation. (Sunrun 10-K; Mark Studios calculation)See details
NREL modelled customer acquisition at $3,139 per residential system in its Q1 2022 benchmark. (NREL)See details
BLS counted 31,350 wage and salary solar PV installer jobs in May 2025, at a median wage of $53,140. (BLS)See details
BLS projects solar PV installer jobs to grow 37% from 2025 to 2035. (BLS)See details
U.S. residential solar installs fell 31% to 4,742 MWdc in 2024 and to 4,647 MWdc in 2025. (SEIA/Wood Mackenzie)See details
Public Law 119-21 ended the 30% homeowner solar tax credit for expenditures after December 31, 2025. (U.S. Congress)See details
Leases and PPAs rose from 26% of new residential systems in 2023 to 43% in 2024. (Berkeley Lab)See details
The CFPB found dealer fees and markups can raise a solar loan's principal 30 percent or more above the cash price. (CFPB)See details
Florida utilities' customer-owned solar systems rose 68.0% from the end of 2022 to the end of 2025, to 319,041. (Florida PSC; our calculation)See details
The popular claim that video lifts conversions up to 80% traces to one tutoring company's landing page test (86%), not to solar. (EyeView Digital)See details
How many U.S. homes have rooftop solar, and how many install it each year?
About 7% of homeowners said they had panels in 2023. Pew Research Center found 7% of U.S. homeowners had installed solar at home (Pew Research Center), up from 4% in 2016 (Pew Research Center) and 6% in its October 2019 survey of 2,564 homeowners (Pew Research Center); in January 2022 it was 8% (Pew Research Center). Another 28% said in 2023 that they were seriously considering it (Pew Research Center), against 46% who had given it serious thought in 2019 (Pew Research Center); Pew changed the question's wording in 2023, so the two are not a like-for-like fall. EIA's 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, a household survey rather than an opinion poll, counted small-scale solar on 3.7% of single-family and mobile homes (EIA), 8.9% in the West (EIA).
Counted by systems, SEIA said in May 2024 that the U.S. had passed five million solar installations of every size (SEIA), 97% of them residential by count (SEIA). Berkeley Lab's 2026 Tracking the Sun update covers about 5.3 million distributed systems, including 450,000 installed in 2025 (Berkeley Lab), after 515,000 in 2024 (Berkeley Lab).
In capacity, EIA estimates U.S. residential small-scale solar reached 40,314.2 megawatts at the end of 2025 (EIA), up from 36,501.8 MW a year earlier (EIA) and 7,527.0 MW at the end of 2016 (EIA), a 5.4-fold rise in nine years (our calculation). The preliminary August 2026 figure was 42,735.3 MW (EIA). Small-scale solar of all sectors generated 92,979 gigawatt-hours in 2025 (EIA), and California produced 34,411 GWh of it, 37% (EIA).
Residential solar installed in the U.S. (SEIA and Wood Mackenzie)
MWdc
Source
2024, down 31% from 2023, the first annual fall since 2017
SEIA is the industry's trade association and Wood Mackenzie sells the full report; the public summaries are what we cite. Installers told them of longer sales cycles and falling close rates in 2026 as homeowners cited personal finances (SEIA/Wood Mackenzie).
Florida
Florida utilities reported 319,041 customer-owned solar systems at the end of 2025, all customer classes together, up 68.0% from 189,931 at the end of 2022 (Florida Public Service Commission; our calculation). They totalled 3,143.5 MW (AC) (Florida PSC), and Florida Power & Light alone had 124,449 (Florida PSC). Florida's small-scale solar generation grew from 205 GWh in 2016 to 5,198 GWh in 2025 (EIA). SEIA ranked Florida third for residential capacity installed in 2025, behind California and Puerto Rico, with both Florida and California down on 2024 (SEIA/Wood Mackenzie).
What does a home solar system cost, and how is it paid for?
Several dollars per watt, depending on who measures and how the system is paid for. Berkeley Lab found that among the top 100 U.S. residential installers in 2025, median prices ran from $2.4 to $6.3/W (Berkeley Lab), and about 60% of those installers had medians below $4 per watt (Berkeley Lab). The median 2025 system was 7.7 kW (Berkeley Lab), against 7.4 kW in 2023 and 2.4 kW in 2000 (Berkeley Lab). Prices for host-owned systems fell $0.5/W from 2024 to 2025 after inflation (Berkeley Lab), and have fallen 70-80% in real terms over two decades (Berkeley Lab).
Published residential solar price measures
Figure
Who counted
Median quoted price on EnergySage's marketplace, H2 2025
The measures differ in what they count: a quote is not an installed price, a benchmark is a model, and a loan-financed price includes the fees rolled into it. Loan-financed systems cost 34% more per watt than cash purchases in 2024 (our calculation from Berkeley Lab). Soft costs, which include customer acquisition, labor, permitting, financing fees and profit, plus other balance-of-system costs were about 80% of the installed price in 2025 (Berkeley Lab).
Loans, leases and dealer fees
Most systems are financed. Citing an industry report, the CFPB says loans paid for 58 percent of the 2023 residential market, cash for 19 percent and third-party ownership for 23 percent (CFPB). Berkeley Lab counts leases and power purchase agreements on 43% of residential systems installed in 2024, up from 26% in 2023 (Berkeley Lab), and its 2024 edition put 2023 at 27% (Berkeley Lab), a one-point revision. By state, third-party ownership ran from under 10% to over 60% (Berkeley Lab).
The CFPB's August 2024 Issue Spotlight found that lender markups and fees can raise a solar loan's principal 30 percent or more above the cash price (CFPB); such fees typically run 10 to 30 percent but can exceed 50 percent (CFPB). Berkeley Lab puts the range at 5-50% (Berkeley Lab). Advertised APRs typically run 1 to 7 percent and often leave those fees out (CFPB). Terms run 8 to 25 years (CFPB), and many loans re-amortize to a higher payment in the 19th month if the buyer has not prepaid about 30 percent, the share once covered by the tax credit (CFPB). Leases typically last 15 to 20 years (CFPB), and power purchase agreements carry escalators of 1 to 5 percent a year (CFPB).
The end of the 25D credit and California's NEM 3.0
The federal Residential Clean Energy Credit paid 30% of the cost of systems installed from 2022 through 2025 (IRS). Section 70506 of Public Law 119-21, signed July 4, 2025, ended it for expenditures after December 31, 2025 (U.S. Congress). For tax year 2023, 1,246,440 returns claimed the credit, worth $6.3 billion (U.S. Treasury), 752,300 of them for rooftop solar (U.S. Treasury). EnergySage reported a 205% year-over-year jump in homeowners working with installers on its marketplace in the second half of 2025 (EnergySage), and the share of its installers quoting leases or PPAs, which can still use a business credit, rose from about 14% to 41% in the first half of 2026 (EnergySage).
In California, the CPUC's decision D.22-12-056 moved new rooftop customers onto the Net Billing Tariff for applications from April 15, 2023 (CPUC). Berkeley Lab's one-year review found that about 2,500 companies completed a California residential system in the following 12 months, but only half completed one under the new tariff (Berkeley Lab); 80% of that year's installs were old-tariff systems from the rush of applications (Berkeley Lab). In that first year, the top five installers' share rose from 40% in the last year of the old tariff to 51% (Berkeley Lab), third-party ownership from 24% to 44% (Berkeley Lab) and battery attachment from about 10% to 60% (Berkeley Lab). Quote requests on EnergySage ran at about 60% of 2019-2021 levels (Berkeley Lab). Nationally, batteries went with 37% of new residential systems in 2025, up from 25% in 2024 (Berkeley Lab).
What does it cost a solar company to win a customer?
Thousands of dollars a system. NREL's Q1 2022 cost benchmark modelled sales and marketing, which covers drawings, advertising, lead generation, the sales pitch and contract negotiation, at $3,139 per residential installation (NREL). Its Q1 2018 benchmark modelled $0.30/Wdc for a small installer and $0.44 per watt for a national integrator (NREL). These are models built from interviews and filings, not measured spending.
The listed companies' filings show what they actually report. Sunrun, the largest U.S. residential solar company, spent $709.3 million on sales and marketing in 2025, against $617.2 million in 2024 and $740.8 million in 2023 (Sunrun 10-K). The rise of 92.1 million in 2025 came mainly from paying sales lead generating partners (Sunrun 10-K), whom it pays per customer basis (Sunrun 10-K), and $95.3 million of the line was amortized commissions and similar contract costs (Sunrun 10-K). Sunrun's customers grew from 1,048,842 to 1,165,686 during 2025 (Sunrun 10-K), so its sales and marketing spending came to about $6,070 per net new customer (our calculation; the expense line also covers more than acquisition, and net growth is after any customers lost). It added 25,475 subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2025, against 30,709 a year earlier (Sunrun 10-K), at a contracted value of $47,988 each (Sunrun 10-K).
Sales, marketing and advertising in the filings
Figure
Source
Sunrun employees at end-2025, including its door-to-door sales force
SunPower's advertising grew 7.3-fold from 2020 to 2022 (our calculation); it filed for Chapter 11 on August 5, 2024 (SunPower 8-K), and Complete Solaria bought its Blue Raven Solar unit, new-homes business and dealer network for $45.0 million (SunPower 8-K). Sunnova, which served over 441,000 customers (Sunnova 10-K) through about 500 dealers (Sunnova 10-K), one of which took about 25% of its dealer spending (Sunnova 10-K), warned of substantial doubt about continuing (Sunnova 10-K) and filed for Chapter 11 on June 8, 2025 (Sunnova 8-K). Enphase, which sells microinverters to installers, said soft demand has brought bankruptcies and closures among installers (Enphase 10-K) and runs an Enphase Appointments Program that sells qualified sales appointments to them (Enphase 10-K).
Door-to-door, online and partners
Sunrun's direct channel combines online lead generation, telesales, field sales, door-to-door and retail (Sunrun 10-K), and it calls the direct-to-home model a primary sales channel exposed to laws on unsolicited sales calls (Sunrun 10-K). Sunnova's dealers reached buyers online, by telemarketing, in stores and by door-to-door canvassing (Sunnova 10-K). Zeo Energy, a smaller listed installer, had about 260 door-to-door agents (Zeo Energy 10-K), whose own team sold 89% of its 2025 installs (Zeo Energy 10-K), and it markets through search and social media (Zeo Energy 10-K). None of these filings mentions video. In SEC full-text search, 10 annual reports filed in 2023 contained both "residential solar" and "door-to-door" (SEC EDGAR), against 6 in 2025 (SEC EDGAR), out of 67 (SEC EDGAR) and 66 (SEC EDGAR) mentioning residential solar; a hit is a document, not a company.
The CFPB says first contact commonly comes through a door-to-door introduction, with the loan offered on a tablet beside the contract (CFPB).
How many solar installers are there, and what do they earn?
About 31,000 on payrolls. BLS counted 31,350 wage and salary solar photovoltaic installer jobs in May 2025 (BLS), at a median annual wage of $53,140 (BLS), a mean of $57,900 (BLS) and $79,970 at the 90th percentile (BLS). That median is 84% of the electricians' median, $63,190 (BLS), in an occupation BLS counts at 757,220 jobs (BLS). In May 2019 there were 11,080 installer jobs (BLS) at a median of $44,890 (BLS), and in May 2022 27,760 (BLS) at $45,230 (BLS). BLS warns that its OEWS survey is not built for year-to-year comparison, so read the 183% rise from 2019 to 2025 (our calculation) as direction, not precise growth.
BLS projects installer employment to grow 37% from 2025 to 2035 (BLS), from about 31,100 jobs including the self-employed (BLS) to 42,400 (BLS), with about 4,200 openings a year (BLS). At 36.5%, it is the second-fastest-growing occupation in that projection table (BLS). The previous 2024-34 edition said 42% (BLS).
Solar PV installer jobs and median wage by state, May 2025 (BLS OEWS)
In May 2022, BLS counted 9,610 installer jobs in California, 8,240 in Texas and 1,110 in Florida (BLS). By May 2025 Florida had 2.7 times as many, while California and Texas had fewer (our calculation, with the same caveat). Electrical contractors employed 11,950 installers (BLS), plumbing and HVAC contractors 3,290 (BLS) and utilities 4,010 (BLS); the Occupational Outlook Handbook says 39% worked for electrical contractors and 17% for temp agencies in 2025 (BLS), where the median was $58,570 (BLS).
Solar jobs beyond the installer title
IREC's National Solar Jobs Census counted 280,119 U.S. solar jobs in 2024 (IREC), against 279,447 in 2023 (IREC). 178,713 were in installation and project development, which includes sales and marketing staff (IREC), and 79,633 of those were at residential firms (IREC). Residential installation jobs fell 6% from 2021 to 2024 (IREC), and from 2019 to 2024 jobs grew 12% while installed capacity grew 286% (IREC). 26% of solar employers found hiring very difficult in 2024, down from 44% in 2022 (IREC). Florida had 14,303 solar jobs, second to California's 78,982 (IREC) (IREC), 9,146 of them in installation and project development (IREC).
The Department of Energy's 2026 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, which counts differently, put solar electric power generation at 359,400 workers in 2025 (DOE), down about 11,000 from 2024 (DOE); 77% of solar employers that hired reported difficulty (DOE), and installer employment in the sector grew 154% from 2022 to 2025 (DOE).
Installer businesses
Federal statistics do not separate solar installers: most sit among electrical contractors. BLS QCEW counted 100,285 private electrical contractor establishments in 2025 (BLS), up from 87,886 in 2019 (BLS), employing 1,123,060 people (BLS) at average pay of $87,578 (BLS); Florida had 7,918 (BLS). Census counted 83,342 electrical contractor establishments with employees in 2023 (Census Bureau), 48,799 of them with fewer than five employees (Census Bureau), and 171,644 with no employees in 2024 (Census Bureau), 20,258 of them in Florida (Census Bureau). Establishments with employees took in $249.2 billion in 2022 (Census Bureau). Solar power generation businesses, a separate industry, employed 17,172 in 2025 (BLS).
Who buys home solar, and what persuades them?
Saving money comes first. In Pew's January 2022 survey of 10,237 U.S. adults, 92% of homeowners who had installed or considered solar named lower bills as a reason (Pew Research Center), 81% helping the environment, and 64% the tax credits (Pew Research Center); in October 2019 the figures were 96%, 87% and 67% (Pew Research Center). In EnergySage's 2026 survey of contractors on its marketplace, 70% said customers buy solar to save money (EnergySage). Interest splits by party: in 2022, 57% of Democratic-leaning homeowners and 36% of Republican-leaning ones had installed or seriously considered solar (Pew Research Center). By region, 17% of Pacific homeowners had panels in 2022 (Pew Research Center), and in 2016 14% of Western homeowners did, against 2% elsewhere (Pew Research Center). In 2024, 18% of U.S. adults said home solar panels are extremely or very common where they live (Pew Research Center).
Adopters earn more than most households, though the gap is narrowing. Berkeley Lab puts the median income of households that installed in 2023 at $115k (Berkeley Lab), down from $141k for 2010 installers (Berkeley Lab); 49% of 2023 adopters earned below 120% of their area's median income (Berkeley Lab). Lower-income adopters lease more: 33% of 2023 systems for households under $50,000 were third-party owned, against 18% over $200,000 (Berkeley Lab). EIA's 2020 survey found solar on 5.7% of homes earning over $150,000 and 1.1% under $20,000 (EIA).
Seeing solar sells solar
The best evidence on what persuades buyers is about seeing panels, not watching ads. In California, Bollinger and Gillingham found that one more installation in a zip code raised the chance of another by 0.78 percentage points, at the average number of owner-occupied homes (Marketing Science). In Connecticut data through 2013, one more system within half a mile added 0.44 installations per Census block group in the next period (Journal of Economic Geography). A 2022 study found that visible panels on the same street influence adoption at distances of 500 meters or more (Marketing Science), while panels that cannot be seen matter only within 100 meters (Marketing Science). No peer-reviewed study we found measures what installer video does to sales. Online, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an advocacy group, found that claims undermining climate solutions made up 70% of the climate-denial claims it coded on 96 YouTube channels in 2023 (CCDH), climate content in general rather than solar.
Does solar add to a home's value?
Studies of owned systems say yes, by a few dollars per watt. Berkeley Lab's 2015 "Selling Into the Sun" study of 22,822 home sales in eight states from 2002 to 2013, 3,951 of them with solar (Berkeley Lab), found buyers paid premiums averaging about $4 per watt (Berkeley Lab), about $15,000 for the average 3.6-kW system of the time (Berkeley Lab). The origins section below covers the 4.1% figure from Zillow.
What do the rules say about advertising and selling solar?
Federal regulators have focused on telemarketing, fake government claims and financing. FTC Chair Lina Khan said in August 2024 that people reported losing over a quarter of a billion dollars in solar-related complaints to the FTC from January 2022 to June 2024 (FTC), and that the agency received over 120,000 complaints in that period about unwanted calls pitching solar, energy and utilities (FTC).
Enforcement against solar sellers
Amount
Source
FTC, 2017: robocallers generating leads for solar installers; $1.4 million penalty suspended after payment of
The 2023 Solar Xchange complaint described tens of millions of calls to numbers on the Do Not Call Registry (FTC), and telemarketers who claimed ties to a utility company or government agency (FTC). The 2017 robocalls opened with lines such as "stop the 14% increase coming soon" (FTC). Connecticut said in 2024 that EnergyBillCruncher's ads produced 1,456 inquiries from its residents (Connecticut Attorney General). Its October 2024 Vision Solar settlement bars signing on tablets or phones and on the same day as the first home visit (Connecticut Attorney General); the state guaranty fund may pay customers up to $25,000 (Connecticut Attorney General). Under the 2026 Sunrun settlement, Elevate Solar must dissolve and faces a $200,000 penalty, suspended after $100,000 (Connecticut Attorney General), and in March 2026 Connecticut said the servicer SunStrong, which manages contracts from bankrupt Sunnova and SunPower, drew approximately 65 complaints (Connecticut Attorney General).
Testimonial videos and ads
Three FTC rules govern a solar testimonial or ad. Under 16 CFR 255.2(c) of the Endorsement Guides, an ad that presents actual consumers should use real customers (eCFR); under 255.2(b), if a customer's bill savings are not typical, the ad should clearly disclose the generally expected performance (eCFR). The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, 16 CFR 465.2, bans fake or misattributed testimonials (eCFR), and knowing violations carry civil penalties of up to $53,088 each at the 2025 inflation-adjusted level (eCFR). The Impersonation Rule, 16 CFR 461.2, bars implying government affiliation, the core of "free government solar" ads (eCFR). Google Ads bars implying ties to a government entity (Google) and claims of results that are improbable (Google); neither policy names solar.
Door-to-door sales and disclosure laws
The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule covers home sales of $25 or more (eCFR) and lets the buyer cancel before midnight of the third business day (eCFR). The CFPB's December 2024 rule brought PACE loans, often sold door to door, under Truth in Lending protections from March 1, 2026 (CFPB); it found PACE loans raised property taxes by about $2,700 a year (CFPB). The CFPB's August 2024 announcement said 58% of 2023 solar projects were loan-financed, often through lenders partnered with door-to-door installers (CFPB). One complaint in its report described a fee of 26% of the system cost added to a loan quoted at 1.99% (CFPB).
Florida: under the 2025 Florida Statutes, s. 520.23 requires a separate solar disclosure statement in at least 12-point type (Florida Statutes) listing up to 32 items, including total cost, each tax incentive used in pricing and the assumptions behind any savings estimate (Florida Statutes). A willful violation can be fined up to the cost of the distributed energy generation system (Florida Statutes, s. 520.25).
California: the CSLB Solar Energy System Disclosure Document must sit on the front of every contract in boldface 16-point type (CSLB). Buyers can cancel within three business days, or five business days if 65 or older (CPUC), and installers must upload three documents before a system connects (CPUC).
Solar marketing agencies, stat aggregators and installers repeat a handful of numbers. We traced each to the organization that produced it. Pages that repeat a claim are linked only as dated evidence of how it spread, never as a source for the number.
"Solar panels raise a home's value by 4.1%"
This is a real Zillow figure with a narrow scope. Zillow Research found in April 2019 that homes with solar sold for 4.1% more on average than comparable homes (Zillow Research), among homes listed and sold from March 1, 2018 to February 28, 2019, controlling only for bedrooms, bathrooms, size, age and location (Zillow Research). It published no sample size, did not separate owned from leased systems, and itself cautioned that the premium may reflect other features solar homes tend to have, 4.1% or not (Zillow Research). Repeaters bend it: SunPower's blog turns the average into $20,500 on a $500,000 home, 4.1% (SunPower), and Renogy calls it "up to 4.1%" (Renogy), turning an average into a ceiling. A 2026 blog credits a 6.9% premium to a "Zillow 2025 Solar Value Report" (Joule) that Zillow never published; the 6.9% comes from SolarReviews, a solar lead seller, which hand-matched about 400 Zillow listings, 6.9% (SolarReviews).
Berkeley Lab's studies measure more carefully. Its 2015 study found about $4/W across 22,822 sales (Berkeley Lab), but 3,828 of the 3,951 solar sales were in California, and only 25 in Florida (Berkeley Lab); outside California the premium was about $3/W (Berkeley Lab). Its 2011 California study found most models near $5.5/watt (Berkeley Lab), from 72,319 sales, 1,894 with solar (Berkeley Lab).
Use instead: a per-watt premium on owned systems, about $4 per watt in Berkeley Lab's 2015 study, and say it reflected what systems cost then, when prices were higher than today.
"X% of solar buyers research on YouTube or online"
We found no study behind the solar-specific versions. Stat aggregators list "42% of solar buyers use YouTube" (WifiTalents), "64% compare 3+ installers online" (Gitnux) and "80% use online reviews" (ZipDo), none naming a study, a sample or a date. The nearest real survey is Modernize's Q1 2019 Homeowner Index; Modernize sells contractor leads, and it surveyed homeowners planning windows, roofing, solar or HVAC projects, not solar alone. It found 51% used online articles as their main research source (Solar Power World), and that 28% researched for more than 10 hours before asking for a quote (Solar Builder).
Use instead: no solar figure exists. Cite Modernize's 2019 numbers with their scope, or say the share is unmeasured.
"Video raises solar landing-page conversions by up to 80%"
No solar study is behind it. A marketing agency's 2026 solar video page says video lifts conversions "up to 80%" (Web Tonic), citing an aggregator. The chain ends at an undated sales brochure from EyeView Digital, a video ad company, describing one landing page for TutorVista, an online tutoring service, where an autoplaying video raised subscribe clicks 86% (EyeView Digital); the same brochure's second test, for a trading platform, showed 31% (EyeView Digital). "82% of solar consumers aged 35-54 prefer video testimonials" (Gitnux) has no named source at all.
Use instead: survey opinion, labelled as such. Wyzowl, which sells video production, found in its 2026 survey of 266 respondents that 83% of video marketers say video increased sales (Wyzowl) and 85% of consumers say a video convinced them to buy (Wyzowl); in a 2019 survey of 238 consumers, 2 out of 3 said a testimonial video would make them more likely to buy (Wyzowl). None of this is solar-specific or measured behaviour.
"Solar customer acquisition costs $0.87 per watt"
The current version has no source we could find. A solar software vendor's 2026 blog says acquisition topped $0.87 per watt in 2024, citing a "Wood Mackenzie CAC Outlook 2026" we could not locate (SurgePV). Older versions repeat NREL accurately: SolarReviews gives $0.30 and $0.44 per watt (SolarReviews), NREL's Q1 2018 modelled figures for small and national installers (shown above). NREL's Q1 2022 benchmark modelled $3,139 per system (NREL).
Use instead: NREL's modelled figures with their year, or a listed company's reported sales and marketing expense, such as Sunrun's, with what that line includes.
"Solar pays for itself in 6 to 10 years"
The range is EnergySage's, and it has been getting longer. An installer's guide says solar pays back in 6 to 10 years, an average of 8.7 years, with no source (Solar Energy World). The series behind such claims is EnergySage's modelled payback on quotes from its own marketplace: 7.5 years for shoppers in the first half of 2015 (EnergySage, archived), close to 8 years in January 2020 (EnergySage, archived), eight to nine years in November 2023 (EnergySage, archived), and 10.8 years on its page updated in September 2026, after the 30% credit ended (EnergySage). That page also claims savings of over $60,500 over 25 years (EnergySage). EnergySage earns from installers, and these are modelled paybacks on quotes, not paybacks homeowners realised.
Use instead: EnergySage's current 10.8 years, labelled as its own model, not 6 to 10.
"A solar system is installed every X seconds"
The figure is SEIA's and changes every year. The oldest form we found is Greentech Media's 2013 "one system every four minutes", republished by SEIA (SEIA, archived). SEIA's Q2 2024 summary said every 39 seconds in 2023 (SEIA, archived). A 2025 news article's "every 54 seconds in 2024" (CleanTechnica) links to no SEIA document we could find. SEIA's line that U.S. solar can power "over 50 million homes" (SEIA) is an energy equivalence for all solar, mostly utility-scale, not a count of homes with panels.
Use instead: SEIA's May 2024 count of five million installations, 97% of them residential, with its date.
We started from the questions people search for about solar video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 269 figures from 48 publishers.
On November 1, 2026, each sourced figure on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (through the BLS data API) and the Occupational Outlook Handbook and Employment Projections (through Internet Archive copies, because bls.gov refuses automated requests); BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages open data; Census County Business Patterns, Nonemployer Statistics and the Economic Census (through the Census data API); EIA's Electric Power Monthly, Today in Energy and Residential Energy Consumption Survey; Berkeley Lab's Tracking the Sun and solar studies (through Internet Archive copies where its site refused scripts); NREL cost benchmarks (through OSTI and Internet Archive copies); IREC's National Solar Jobs Census; the Department of Energy's U.S. Energy and Employment Report; the U.S. Treasury, IRS, Public Law 119-21 on govinfo and the CPUC; the Florida Public Service Commission; the 10-K and 8-K filings of Sunrun, Sunnova, SunPower, Enphase, SolarEdge and Zeo Energy and SEC EDGAR full-text search; the CFPB, FTC (through Internet Archive copies), the eCFR, Google Ads policies, the attorneys general of Connecticut, Nebraska and Minnesota, Florida statutes, California's CSLB and CPUC and the Texas Senate Research Center; Pew Research Center, EnergySage, Zillow, Wyzowl and SEIA; peer-reviewed studies; and the pages behind each popular claim. We planned our own read of solar installer homepages from OpenStreetMap, but the public map server was at capacity all evening and never returned the list, so the page has no homepage figures. We left out Meta's ad policies (they refuse automated requests and have no archived copy), EIA's monthly net-metering counts and NREL's latest cost model (published only as spreadsheets), and Census advertising spending for contractors, which Census does not publish for this industry.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
709,253,000 / (1,165,686 - 1,048,842) = 709,253,000 / 116,844 = 6,070.2; the expense line covers more than customer acquisition, and net growth is after customers lost
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Federal statistics do not separate solar installers. Most sit among electrical contractors (NAICS 238210), so business counts and receipts include all electrical work; only the BLS occupation code for solar PV installers is solar-specific.
Nobody publishes what video does for solar sales. No filing, survey or study we found measures the effect of installer video; the popular figures trace to other industries or to nothing.
Several figures come from companies with an interest. SEIA is the industry's trade association, Wood Mackenzie sells the full market reports, EnergySage earns from installers, and Wyzowl sells video production; each is named beside its figure.
Customer acquisition costs are modelled or broad. NREL's figures are models built from interviews, and companies' sales and marketing lines include more than winning customers.
Measures of the market disagree. SEIA counts megawatts, Berkeley Lab counts systems and prices, EIA estimates capacity, and the CFPB cites an unnamed industry report for its financing shares; we keep each one's own definition.
BLS's OEWS survey is not built for comparing years. The installer job changes from 2019 and 2022 show direction, not precise growth.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/solar-video-statistics#FIL-005. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "Solar Video Statistics." Last verified Nov 1, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/solar-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, November 1). Solar video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/solar-video-statistics
MLA
“Solar Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 1 Nov. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/solar-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “Solar Video Statistics.” Last modified November 1, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/solar-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_solar_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{Solar Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/solar-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-11-01}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is February 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Nov 1, 2026: First published with 269 figures from 48 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How many U.S. homes have solar panels?
In Pew's 2023 survey, 7% of U.S. homeowners said they had installed solar at home. SEIA counted more than five million U.S. solar installations of all sizes in May 2024, 97% of them residential.
How much does it cost a solar company to get a customer?
NREL modelled $3,139 per residential system for sales and marketing in its Q1 2022 benchmark. Sunrun's reported sales and marketing expense was $709.3 million in 2025, about $6,070 per net new customer by our calculation.
Does solar still get a 30% federal tax credit in 2026?
Not for homeowners who buy. Public Law 119-21 ended the Residential Clean Energy Credit for expenditures after December 31, 2025. Leases and PPAs rose to 43% of new residential systems in 2024, and installers are leaning on them.
How many solar installers are there?
BLS counted 31,350 wage and salary solar photovoltaic installer jobs in May 2025, with a median wage of $53,140, and projects 37% growth from 2025 to 2035. IREC counted 280,119 solar jobs of all kinds in 2024.
Can a solar company use customer testimonial videos?
Yes, with real customers and truthful results. The FTC's Endorsement Guides call for disclosing generally expected performance when a customer's savings are not typical, and knowing violations of its reviews and testimonials rule carry penalties of up to $53,088 each.
What does Florida require when selling solar?
Florida s. 520.23 requires a separate disclosure statement in at least 12-point type listing up to 32 items, including total cost and the assumptions behind any savings estimate.
Does solar raise a home's value by 4.1%?
The 4.1% is Zillow's 2019 average for homes sold from March 2018 to February 2019, with limited controls. Berkeley Lab's 2015 study of 22,822 sales found a premium of about $4 per watt for owned systems.
