Just How Wealthy Are Residential Solar Customers?

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Approximately 70% of households with a solar installation are middle-income earners, according to new figures published this week by Power Scout and GTM Research, which are based off of machine learning and marketing databases.

In an effort to determine what types of customers are choosing to install residential solar systems, PowerScout — the first AI-enabled marketplace for sustainable smart home improvement — and leading market analysis firm GTM Research combined machine learning analysis of satellite recognition technology to detect solar panels in satellite images across four leading residential solar states — California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — with a consumer marketing database to determine the income bracket for each home with solar, and found that 70% of solar households are middle-income — between $45,000 and $150,000.

This compares favorably with the 65% of the generation population who qualify as middle-income, meaning that, on average, middle-income homes are over-represented in the solar sample. Further, 17% of those with solar on their roofs earned more than $150,000, while 10% of the homes in the sample size were of the same income bracket.

However, and unsurprisingly, 61% of households with solar had an income of at least $75,000, compared to 44% of the overall population of those states.

And, of course, households with an income of between $100,000 and $150,000 were the biggest solar demographic.

While having money isn’t necessary for installing solar, it’s obviously an easier proposition. However, low-income households haven’t ignored the potential of solar, and according to GTM, over the four states sampled, account for approximately 530 megawatts of installations.


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Joshua S Hill

I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

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