10 Fastest-Growing Solar Cities in California

February 9th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan

While solar is blooming fast in many other states now, California’s still the U.S. leader and continues to install solar at a rapid clip. There is actually hardly a country on earth with as much solar as is installed in California.

PV Solar Report, “an authority on California solar market data,” and SunRun, “the nation’s leading home solar company,” recently released a list* of the California cities growing the fastest in solar power installations. It’s a list, not much more than that, but who doesn’t love a list!

But here are some insights from SunRun and PV Solar Report on the rankings before revealing the list below:

“While steady solar growth continues in traditional solar hot beds like San Jose, new solar leaders like Hemet and Apple Valley indicate increasing solar adoption on a broader geographic scale. In addition, the majority of homeowners in these cities chose to go solar without buying the panels, known as solar power service.” (In other words, as reported many times here on CleanTechnica, solar leasing is popular… like it or not.)

“For example, top city San Jose had 648 homeowners choose solar service in 2011 versus 312 opting for panel purchase. In December 2011 solar power service was over 70% of the home solar market.”

SunRun is eager to note that it invented this solar option way back in 2007 and leads the market with about twice the market share of the next largest provider. But here are the really amazing statistics, in my opinion: “SunRun now installs over $1.5 million in solar every day, completing one rooftop installation every 11 minutes of the business day by letting American families switch to solar without spending $30,000 or more to buy panels.” Wow, $1.5 million/day, one rooftop every 11 minutes! Impressive.

Now, though, let’s get to the top 10 list!

San Jose
Bakersfield
Simi Valley
Lancaster
Fresno
Corona
Murrieta
Rocklin
Hemet
Apple Valley

*The list is “based on the California Solar Initiative’s (CSI) database of residential rebate reservations for calendar year 2011.”

Source: Business Wire
California solar roof installation via Lauren Wellicome

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Tags: apple valley, bakersfield, California, california solar cities, california solar leasing, cities fastest growing solar, corona, fastest growing cities solar power, fresno, hemet, lancaster, murrieta, PV Solar Report, rocklin, San Jose, simi valley, solar cities, solar power california, sunrun

About the Author

Zachary Shahan is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species) one letter at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of EV Obsession, Gas2, Solar Love, Planetsave, or Bikocity; or as president of Important Media. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, energy storage, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media: ZacharyShahan.com. Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, SCTY, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB. After years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these companies and feels like they are good companies to invest in.