About Solar Power Fix

Solar Power Fix ranks solar installers in US cities by the home solar systems they have actually installed. We cover 129 cities in 17 states and publish profiles of the 233 companies that rank in at least one of them, alongside guides on what solar costs, what the 2026 federal incentives actually are, and what to do when a system stops producing.

This page explains where the numbers come from and what they are worth, because most solar "top 10" lists never do.

Where the rankings come from

Most rankings are built from Tracking the Sun, a dataset published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2024 edition, CC BY 4.0). It compiles the records that utilities and state agencies keep for every solar system connected to the grid: when it was installed, where, how big it is, what it cost, whether it was leased, what equipment it uses — and which company installed it. Our analysis covers 1,203,790 residential systems.

Tracking the Sun currently runs through 2023. New York and New Jersey publish their own, more recent records of every residential project with the company that installed it (NYSERDA and New Jersey's Clean Energy Program), so rankings in those states cover 2023 to 2025. New Jersey's records don't include prices.

Where those records don't name the installer, a few cities publish their own building permits with the name of the company that pulled each one. We use them for Austin, Chicago, Honolulu, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Seattle: there the ranking counts residential solar permits instead of completed installations, and each city page says so and links to the city's open data portal. Permit records don't include prices or leasing, so those figures are missing on those pages.

For each city we count the systems each company installed on existing homes in the three most recent years of complete records (for most states, 2021 to 2023). A company needs at least 10 local installations to be ranked and must have installed systems in the state in the latest year on record. A city is ranked only when it has at least 300 home systems with a named installer in those three years and at least 5 companies qualify. New-construction systems are left out, because there the homebuilder picks the installer. Prices are medians for systems the homeowner bought outright, before incentives.

Nobody pays to be listed, to rank higher or to be left out. The order comes from the records.

Companies that closed

The records run a year or two behind, and several of the largest residential installers have since closed or gone bankrupt. We check the companies in our rankings against news reports. Those confirmed as closed, liquidated or in bankruptcy are removed from the rankings and listed separately on each city page, with a link to the report, because that is exactly what someone with an orphaned system needs to know.

What the rankings don't tell you

An installation count measures experience in an area, not quality. We do not measure workmanship, customer service, or how a company handles problems after the sale, and we do not inspect anyone's work or endorse any company. For California installers we show the state contractor license when the company's name matches an active license on the CSLB's public list without ambiguity; elsewhere we don't check licenses or insurance.

Coverage also has gaps. Some states' records don't name the installer (Colorado, Utah and Maryland among them), some utilities don't report at all (LADWP in Los Angeles and SMUD in Sacramento, for example), and many states have neither usable records nor public permits. For those states we publish what the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports every month: how many homes have rooftop solar and how fast that is growing. We only rank a city when the records are complete enough to do it honestly.

Before you hire anyone, verify their license with your state contractor licensing board, ask for proof of insurance, read recent reviews and get at least three written quotes.

Where the other numbers come from

Residential electricity rates are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A. Federal incentive information reflects the changes made by P.L. 119-21: the 30% residential credit under Section 25D ended on December 31, 2025, and the 48E credit remains available to system owners through 2027, which homeowners can reach indirectly through a lease or PPA. Where we cite a figure, we link the source.

The number of homes with solar in each state comes from the EIA's monthly Form EIA-861M (net metering). Solar production estimates in our cost guide come from PVWatts, published by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL).

How this site is funded

Solar Power Fix is operated independently and may earn money from advertising. We don't sell leads or take fees from the companies we rank. Advertising has no effect on the rankings, which are computed from the installation records and are not for sale.

Corrections

If a company's name is wrong or two companies have been merged by mistake, email contact@solarpowerfix.com and we will fix it. We can't change the underlying installation records, which come from utilities and state agencies, but we will correct any error in how we read them.

Rankings built from the Tracking the Sun 2024 edition and from the open permit data of 8 cities.