Solar Adopter Income and Demographic Trends: An Update from Berkeley Lab

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has released the latest edition of its annual report, Residential Solar-Adopter Income and Demographic Trends. The report is based on address-level data for 3.4 million residential households across the country that installed solar onsite through year-end 2022, representing 86% of all U.S. residential PV systems. It describes trends in solar-adopter household income, race and ethnicity, rurality, education levels, occupation, age, home value, housing type and tenure, and prevalence within “disadvantaged communities”. The report also explores how characteristics of PV installations vary with household income level, including differences in the use of third-party ownership, system size, and the use of battery storage, as well variation in solar-adopter income levels across individual installers.

The report is accompanied by an online solar demographics data visualization tool that enables users to further explore the data at the national, state, county, and Census tract level.

In this webinar hosted by the Clean Energy States Alliance, report authors from Berkeley Lab presented their findings. Their presentations were followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Speakers:

• Galen Barbose, Berkeley Lab
• Sydney Forrester, Berkeley Lab
• Eric O’Shaughnessy, Berkeley Lab
• Warren Leon, Clean Energy States Alliance (moderator)