{"id":8949,"date":"2016-09-07T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T09:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/?p=8949"},"modified":"2018-03-12T18:57:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T18:57:04","slug":"u-s-solar-power-permitting-in-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/u-s-solar-power-permitting-in-2015","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Solar Power Permitting: 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year<\/a> we harnessed\u00a0BuildZoom\u2019s national building permit database<\/a> to gain visibility into the spread of U.S. solar power. Using simple back-of-the-envelope<\/a> calculations we\u00a0tracked the number\u00a0of solar power systems in the U.S. and their distribution across regions, and we ranked the largest metro areas by solar power penetration – the estimated number of solar power systems per capita.<\/p>\n

Three things have happened since:<\/p>\n

– Our database has expanded to cover new areas
\n– We have become more sophisticated and are using machine learning to single out solar power permits
\n– Over 325,000 new solar power systems were added in 2015<\/p>\n

Here we provide new estimates for 2015, as well as revised estimates for earlier years that incorporate these developments.<\/p>\n

National Trend<\/strong>
\nThe pace of new solar power addition continued to accelerate in 2015.<\/p>\n

\"AggNatlEst_wAnn\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Regional Trends<\/strong>
\nRegionally, California maintained its position as leader of the pack, accounting for almost half of all new solar power systems. The northeast\u2019s share also continued to grow.<\/p>\n

\"AggReg2Est_area_smoothed_modified\"<\/a><\/p>\n


\n<\/a>
\n<\/a>\"regional_table\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Solar Power Penetration<\/strong>
\nHawaii continues to be in a league of its own with respect to solar power penetration. In the continental U.S., 7 of the 10 metro areas with the highest solar power penetration rates were in California. The other 3 were Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver. Boston came in 11th, presumably owing to strong incentives for solar power<\/a> in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

\"penetration_table\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Largest Installation Contractors
\n<\/strong>Most of the firms that market solar power to consumers rely on a large number of small local installation contractors. However, SolarCity and Vivint Solar stand out in their use of in-house installation teams. Therefore, it is not surprising that these two firms continue to top of the list of largest installation contractors. The remaining firms are either purely installation contractors, or companies that also market solar power but use a mixture of in-house and contractor teams for installation.<\/p>\n

\"contractor_table\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For more information on BuildZoom\u2019s building permit data and what can be done with it, contact us<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n


\nMethodology
\n<\/strong>The estimates provided here are back-of-the-envelope estimates, intended to gauge broad trends. They are obtained in the following steps, of which the first two comprise part of BuildZoom\u2019s broader business operations, and are subject to continuous modification and improvement. Steps three and on are specific to the analysis.
\n1) Building permit data are collected continuously from a large number of jurisdictions throughout the U.S, covering approximately 40% of the U.S. population, and distributed across all major urban areas.
\n2) Solar power permits are identified using a tailored machine learning classification technique.
\n3) The monthly count of unique addresses associated with solar power permits is obtained for every building permit issuing jurisdiction:
\n– The monthly counts are limited to jurisdiction-months in which a reliable stream of permit data is observed for the jurisdiction. If there are no solar power permits observed in such a jurisdiction-month, the count is taken to be zero.
\n– Only the first solar power permit associated with an address is counted, reflecting the simplifying assumption that replacement of solar power systems is still rare.
\n– The earliest stage in the permitting during which permits are observed varies across jurisdictions. For further simplicity, the analysis considers permits at any stage, including applications that have not yet been approved.
\n4) The monthly counts from step (3) are summed over observed jurisdictions at the metro area level (CBSA), and the sum is divided by the metro area\u2019s population-weighted coverage (a fraction) to adjust in a crude but simple way for partial coverage of the metro area. This implicitly assumes the likelihood of solar power installation is uniform across the metro area and proportional to population. The resulting adjusted metro area counts are then summed across all observed metros in each state and divided by the CBSA-level coverage, i.e. the ratio of the summed population of all observed CBSAs (or parts thereof within the state) and the state\u2019s total population. This adjustment accounts for lack of coverage in some – typically small – metro areas and in rural areas. The implicit assumption is similar in nature to the previous one. Similar summation and adjustment is performed at the Census division level, to account for a handful of low-population states that lack coverage.
\n5) The adjusted metro area counts are divided by the metro area population to obtain the reported penetration rates, and the remaining reported figures draw on the state, regional and national adjusted counts.
\n6) Steps 3, 4 and 5 are repeated with respect to monthly counts by contractor. This process differs from the company-agnostic one in that each company\u2019s states of operation are verified with the companies themselves, and companies are necessarily assigned a zero share in non-operation states. The reported contractor ranking draws on the resulting national counts by contractor.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year we harnessed\u00a0BuildZoom\u2019s national building permit database to gain visibility into the spread of U.S. solar power. Using simple back-of-the-envelope calculations we\u00a0tracked the number\u00a0of solar power systems in the U.S. and their distribution across regions, and we ranked the largest metro areas by solar power penetration – the estimated number of solar power systems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2997,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-market-data","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2997"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildzoom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}