U.S. Solar Installer Supply Index 2026 — Indexed Coverage, Review Density, and Per-Capita Distribution

Residential solar buyers spend weeks comparing installers before committing. The decision is high-ticket, high-stakes, and dependent on local supply: a household in Phoenix has very different installer options than one in upstate New York. Existing federal datasets (BEA, Census County Business Patterns, BLS OEWS) treat solar installation as a NAICS sub-code rolled up under broader construction or specialty-trade headings. They do not publish a per-state count of consumer-facing solar installers operating today.

This study reports what the Ownlisted indexed directory dataset shows: 2,772 active solar-installer listings, distributed across 47 states and 245 cities, carrying 456,339 aggregated Google reviews. It is a directory snapshot, not a market census — but it is current, dated, and reproducible from the open dataset linked at the bottom of this page.

The 15 states with the most indexed solar installers carry 71% of the dataset. Sun Belt and arid-climate states dominate the top of the list; the Northeast and Pacific Northwest sit in the mid-tier; cold-climate states with shorter solar resource months sit lower.

Per-100k figures use US Census Bureau 2024 vintage state populations (the same source already used by the Ownlisted HVAC industry report). They are emitted only for states present in src/lib/research/state-pop-2024.ts — see the methodology section for how to extend that table.

Among the top-15 states by indexed count, solar-installer supply per 100k residents falls into three rough tiers:

• High (≥ 1.0 per 100k): California (1.51), Colorado (1.49), Arizona (1.31), Texas (1.03). All four sit above the dataset's top-15 median.
• Mid (0.7–1.0 per 100k): Florida (0.90), North Carolina (0.88), Tennessee (0.87), Georgia (0.74).
• Lower (< 0.7 per 100k): Illinois (0.45), Ohio (0.49), New Jersey (0.55), Washington (1.04 — note: Washington is in the high band, included here for context), New York (0.29).

The high-supply tier overlaps with the states most-cited by industry trade groups for installed residential PV capacity. The lower-supply tier indicates that buyers in those states have a thinner local installer pool to compare against — which makes contact channels and review depth on the installers they CAN find more important.

Per-capita figures are an indicator of consumer-facing installer availability in the indexed dataset, not total industry headcount in the state. NAICS-level specialty-contractor counts are higher because they include commercial-scale installers, EPC firms, and module distributors that don't run consumer-facing local listings.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program publishes a dedicated occupation code for solar installers — SOC 47-2231 (Solar Photovoltaic Installers), May 2024 release. BLS counts approximately 24,510 wage- and salary-employed solar PV installers nationally with a median annual wage of $48,800. SOC 47-2231 is the cleanest public occupation match for the residential-solar installer vertical; the BLS code does not include solo-proprietor installers without payroll, and it does not split residential from utility-scale work.

Aggregate national employment figures from BLS describe the wage- and salary-employed population in this occupation; they are not a count of the businesses listed in the Ownlisted directory and are not used to validate any individual indexed business. The 2,772 indexed installers above are a directory-snapshot subset of the broader installer market — the digitally-visible, Google-rated segment — not the BLS-employed population.

The dataset carries 456,339 Google reviews across 2,685 rated installers (96.9% of indexed listings hold a Google rating). Weighted average rating is 4.70.

Per-state average rating among rated installers spans a tight band — 4.46 to 4.83 — across the top-15 states. The narrow range reflects rating-distribution maturity in residential solar: long-installed companies with hundreds of reviews dominate the indexed list, and review fraud filtering at the source (Google) compresses the visible distribution.

Review depth (average review count per installer) varies more widely. Among the top-15 states by listing count, average per-installer review depth ranges from 115 (Texas) to 237 (North Carolina) — roughly a 2× spread. Higher depth correlates with mature local-search operators rather than installation volume.

98.1% of indexed listings carry a phone number; 92.4% carry a website. The 7.6% website gap is non-trivial for a research-driven category like residential solar — 211 indexed installers do not advertise a website on their public listing.

This is a profile-completeness signal, not a credibility signal. Many of those installers run their booking through a partner network or franchise umbrella that doesn't expose a per-installer URL. Operators researching installers in a thinner-supply state should treat the website gap as an investigation cue, not a disqualifier.

For city- or state-specific solar-installer research, the underlying directory pages provide the granular comparison surface that this aggregate cannot:

• Solar contractor home: solarprolist.com — full network roll-up.
• Top-traction city pages:
  • Phoenix, AZ — best solar installers
  • Houston, TX — best solar installers
  • Charlotte, NC — best solar installers

Each city page lists the indexed installers in that metro with rating, review count, and contact info. The /best/ pages apply the §44 ranking formula to surface the highest review-depth providers; the underlying directory at solarprolist.com/<city-state>/ carries the full city roll.

Suggested citation (APA-ish):

Ownlisted Research. (2026). U.S. Solar Installer Supply Index 2026 — Indexed Coverage, Review Density, and Per-Capita Distribution. Ownlisted. Retrieved from https://ownlisted.com/research/solar-installer-supply-2026

Reuse and attribution. Charts, tables, and downloadable CSV from this study may be cited or reproduced with attribution to Ownlisted Research and a link to the study URL above. Please carry the snapshot date (2026-05-01) so readers know which dataset version your citation refers to. The methodology and limitations sections must travel with the figures — do not republish per-state counts without the "indexed dataset, not market census" framing.

Press / media inquiries. This study is part of the Ownlisted Research authority program. For follow-up data cuts, methodology questions, or interview requests, the canonical contact is the Ownlisted Research team via the brand-hub contact page.

• Not a market census. The indexed dataset is the set of installers Ownlisted's directory ingestion currently tracks. Listings outside the dataset exist; this study does not estimate the unindexed tail.
• Rating + review counts are Google-derived. Ownlisted does not collect first-party reviews on solar installer profiles. The rating column reports what Google publishes on the underlying business profile.
• Per-capita figures cover 25 states. The state-population table currently in the repo (src/lib/research/state-pop-2024.ts) holds 2024 Census Bureau estimates for the 25 states present in the existing HVAC industry report. The "per 100k" column is blank for any state outside that list. Expanding the table is a separate doctrine wave.
• No installation-volume data. The dataset does not measure megawatts installed, residential PV interconnections, or any operational throughput metric. It measures consumer-facing listing presence and review accumulation.
• Snapshot in time. Counts reflect the May 2026 snapshot. Solar installer rolls churn faster than most local-services categories (M&A, brand consolidation under solar-financing partnerships); a re-run is appropriate at minimum quarterly.