Original research
How many solar homes actually have a battery
Paired-battery rates for the installed residential solar fleet, by state, from federal utility filings.
The finding
Key findings
- 1 5.9% of the installed solar fleet has a paired battery
297,550 of 5,077,543 net-metered residential systems at the end of 2024.
- 2 The rate rose +40.2% in one year
From 4.2% to 5.9%, 107,326 more paired batteries, in a year when new solar connections themselves fell 30.6%.
- 3 California holds 74% of every paired residential battery in the country
Roughly 221,226 of 297,550. No other state is close in absolute terms.
- 4 The leaders are all states that ended retail net metering
Hawaii (2015), Utah (2017) and California (2023) occupy three of the top four places. When exports stop being worth the retail rate, the value moves to the household’s own evening load.
- 5 Electricity price does not explain the pattern
Across states with at least 10,000 systems the correlation between residential price and battery attachment is weak. Tariff design, not price level, is what tracks the table.
- 6 Michigan is the outlier nobody can explain
18.4% on 23,456 systems, with no export tariff change and mid-table reliability. We flag it rather than inventing a reason.
- 7 The energy-capacity column in this dataset is not usable
It implies California batteries average 0.83 hours of duration, which is not physically plausible. We publish the attachment rate and not the capacity, see methodology.
Fleet rate, not sales rate: these are different numbers
Battery attachment on this page is measured across the installed fleet: of all the net-metered solar systems standing on American roofs, what share has a battery attached.
Marketplace and installer surveys measure the sales rate: of systems sold this quarter, what share included storage. The sales rate is far higher, because the fleet is dominated by systems sold years ago when batteries were rare and expensive.
Both numbers are correct and they answer different questions. A homeowner asking “do most solar homes have a battery?” wants this one. An analyst sizing next year’s storage market wants the other. Quoting one as the other is the most common error in this topic, and we have found it in trade coverage as often as in consumer content.
The national picture
Roughly one net-metered solar system in 17 has a battery attached. Put the other way: 94.1% of American solar households have no storage at all, and rely on the grid to absorb their midday surplus and supply their evening load.
That is a rational choice wherever net metering still credits exports at the retail rate. The grid is, in effect, a free battery with unlimited capacity and perfect round-trip efficiency. A household only needs its own storage when that arrangement is withdrawn, which is exactly what the state table below shows.
Where the batteries are
47 of 51 jurisdictions report a figure. The concentration is extreme: four states account for the overwhelming majority of paired batteries, and most states are below 2%.
Battery attachment by state, 2024
| # | State | Solar systems | With a paired battery | Attachment rate 2024 | Rate 2023 | Change | Residential price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michigan | 23,456 | 4,316 | 18.4% | 7.4% | +11.0%pp | 19.30¢ |
| 2 | Hawaii | 98,418 | 17,951 | 18.2% | 16.5% | +1.7%pp | 42.86¢ |
| 3 | Utah | 81,115 | 8,639 | 10.7% | 8.1% | +2.6%pp | 12.22¢ |
| 4 | California | 2,090,983 | 221,226 | 10.6% | 7.0% | +3.6%pp | 31.97¢ |
| 5 | Rhode Island | 17,321 | 1,155 | 6.7% | 0.1% | +6.6%pp | 28.65¢ |
| 6 | Ohio | 27,520 | 1,646 | 6.0% | 6.6% | -0.6%pp | 15.99¢ |
| 7 | Indiana | 11,045 | 628 | 5.7% | 4.9% | +0.8%pp | 14.77¢ |
| 8 | Kentucky | 10,069 | 476 | 4.7% | 4.7% | +0.0%pp | 12.79¢ |
| 9 | Washington | 59,235 | 2,577 | 4.4% | 3.8% | +0.5%pp | 11.90¢ |
| 10 | Arizona | 317,033 | 10,335 | 3.3% | 2.7% | +0.6%pp | 14.91¢ |
| 11 | New Hampshire | 22,503 | 718 | 3.2% | 0.4% | +2.8%pp | 23.40¢ |
| 12 | Texas | 133,501 | 3,631 | 2.7% | 1.7% | +1.0%pp | 14.94¢ |
| 13 | Missouri | 30,022 | 760 | 2.5% | 2.2% | +0.3%pp | 12.91¢ |
| 14 | Nevada | 134,257 | 3,142 | 2.3% | 2.2% | +0.2%pp | 15.00¢ |
| 15 | Georgia | 18,612 | 395 | 2.1% | 3.2% | -1.0%pp | 14.08¢ |
| 16 | Idaho | 22,899 | 465 | 2.0% | 1.4% | +0.6%pp | 11.52¢ |
| 17 | Oklahoma | 16,755 | 318 | 1.9% | 1.6% | +0.3%pp | 12.24¢ |
| 18 | South Carolina | 40,055 | 753 | 1.9% | 1.7% | +0.1%pp | 14.23¢ |
| 19 | New York | 226,979 | 3,995 | 1.8% | 1.5% | +0.3%pp | 24.43¢ |
| 20 | Oregon | 52,600 | 863 | 1.6% | 1.2% | +0.4%pp | 14.70¢ |
| 21 | Pennsylvania | 81,375 | 1,302 | 1.6% | 1.7% | -0.1%pp | 17.77¢ |
| 22 | Wisconsin | 18,581 | 286 | 1.5% | 0.8% | +0.7%pp | 17.18¢ |
| 23 | Massachusetts | 189,611 | 2,522 | 1.3% | 1.1% | +0.2%pp | 29.35¢ |
| 24 | Florida | 289,774 | 3,130 | 1.1% | 0.9% | +0.2%pp | 14.14¢ |
| 25 | Virginia | 69,553 | 696 | 1.0% | 1.1% | -0.1%pp | 14.41¢ |
| 26 | New Jersey | 199,822 | 1,599 | 0.8% | 0.7% | +0.1%pp | 19.34¢ |
| 27 | Colorado | 179,751 | 1,294 | 0.7% | 0.6% | +0.1%pp | 14.92¢ |
| 28 | Connecticut | 103,824 | 675 | 0.7% | 0.0% | +0.7%pp | 28.75¢ |
| 29 | Maryland | 108,428 | 531 | 0.5% | 0.4% | +0.0%pp | 17.86¢ |
| 30 | North Carolina | 57,393 | 247 | 0.4% | 0.6% | -0.2%pp | 14.13¢ |
| 31 | Minnesota | 22,621 | 88 | 0.4% | 0.3% | +0.1%pp | 15.45¢ |
| 32 | Maine | 14,867 | 55 | 0.4% | 0.1% | +0.3%pp | 24.29¢ |
| 33 | Arkansas | 19,146 | 46 | 0.2% | 0.2% | +0.1%pp | 12.32¢ |
| 34 | New Mexico | 61,209 | 110 | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.0%pp | 14.20¢ |
| 35 | Iowa | 16,392 | 21 | 0.1% | 0.3% | -0.1%pp | 13.40¢ |
| 36 | Illinois | 103,145 | 31 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0%pp | 15.87¢ |
| 37 | Delaware | 14,087 | 3 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0%pp | 16.57¢ |
| 38 | Louisiana | 34,417 | 3 | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0%pp | 11.73¢ |
States with at least 10,000 residential net-metered systems. HyreSolar calculation from EIA-861 2024.
Figures labelled HyreSolar calculation are computed by us from the EIA source files named below. EIA publishes the inputs; it does not publish these ratios.
What the leaders have in common, and the one that does not fit
Hawaii (18.2%), Utah (10.7%) and California (10.6%) take three of the top four places, and they share one condition: the utility no longer pays retail value for exported solar.
Michigan does not fit, and it is the highest rate in the table at 18.4% on a base of 23,456 systems. Michigan has no export tariff change of that kind. Its residential price, 19.30¢/kWh, is above the national average but well short of the leaders. Grid reliability is a tempting explanation, EIA reports Michigan at 482 outage minutes per customer in 2024 against a state median of 297, but that ranks it 19th of 51, not an outlier, and several states with far worse reliability show battery rates below 2%. We cannot explain Michigan from this data, and we are not going to invent a reason.
Michigan does not fit, and it is the highest rate in the table at 18.4% on a base of 23,456 systems. Michigan has no export tariff change of that kind. Its residential price, 19.30¢/kWh, is above the national average but well short of the leaders. Grid reliability is a tempting explanation, EIA reports Michigan at 482 outage minutes per customer in 2024 against a state median of 297, but that ranks it 19th of 51, not an outlier, and several states with far worse reliability show battery rates below 2%. We cannot explain Michigan from this data, and we are not going to invent a reason.
One further caution on Michigan: its rate moved from 7.4% to 18.4% in a single year. On a two-year-old EIA schedule, a jump of that size is at least as likely to be a utility improving its reporting as a market doubling. The same applies to Rhode Island, which moves from 0.1% to 6.7%.
It is not about the price of electricity
The intuitive explanation (expensive power means batteries pay) does not survive contact with the data. Plotted against residential price, the states cluster with no clear relationship. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York all pay well above 20¢/kWh and sit near the bottom of the attachment table. Utah pays 12.22¢ and sits third.
What separates them is whether exporting still pays. A household in a retail-rate net metering state has no economic reason to buy storage, however expensive its electricity, because every exported kilowatt-hour already earns full retail value. A household in a net billing state has a reason regardless of the price level, because the gap between what it pays and what it earns for the same kilowatt-hour has opened up.
The rate moved fast in one year
National attachment rose from 4.2% to 5.9% in a single year, an increase of +40.2% in relative terms. On a fleet of five million systems that is a large absolute movement: 107,326 more paired batteries in twelve months, in a year when new solar connections themselves fell 30.6%.
Two years is not a trend, and we will not present it as one. EIA first collected these columns for the 2023 data year, so 2023 and 2024 are the entire available series. Early years of a new schedule also improve as filers learn it, so part of the national rise is very likely better reporting rather than more batteries. This page becomes considerably more useful with the next release, and we intend to run it annually against the same URL.
Methodology
Definition
Attachment rate = residential PV-paired battery installations ÷ residential photovoltaic net-metering installations, both from the EIA-861 Net Metering schedule, summed to state level across all filing utilities. EIA publishes both counts; it does not publish the ratio.
Why we do not publish kWh per system
The same schedule carries a PV-paired energy capacity column in megawatthours, which would appear to support an average battery size per state. It does not survive a plausibility check.
Dividing reported energy capacity by reported power capacity gives the battery’s duration in hours. For Hawaii that comes out at 2.6 hours and for Utah 2.3, both consistent with a typical home battery. For California it gives 0.83 hours and for Texas 0.38 hours. No residential battery product on the market has a duration below one hour; a Tesla Powerwall is roughly 2.7.
This is not a coverage problem, utilities reporting 92.1% of national installations also report an energy figure, and 97% in California. The column is internally inconsistent in several large states, so any state ranking of battery size built on it would be wrong. We report the diagnostic rather than the metric, because other researchers using this schedule need to know.
Inclusion floor
Only states with at least 10,000 residential net-metered systems are ranked. Without a floor the table is led by noise: Tennessee shows 39.5% on a base of 86 systems; West Virginia shows 17.1% on a base of 3,535 systems. Those rates are arithmetically true and analytically meaningless, so we state the floor rather than quietly dropping the rows.
What "paired" means
EIA counts a battery as PV-paired when it is installed with, and reported alongside, a net-metered photovoltaic system. Batteries that are not PV-paired are reported separately and are excluded here: a standalone home battery on a house without solar is a different product and a different purchase.
The count is of installations, not of capacity. A system with a small battery and a system with three stacked units each count once.
Coverage and its limits
Two data years only, 2023 and 2024. 47 of 51 jurisdictions report a figure; the remainder either reported nothing on these columns or have no qualifying systems. A blank is not a zero and we do not treat it as one: a state that filed nothing is shown as having no figure, not as having no batteries.
Non-net-metered residential batteries do not appear at all, which understates storage in states where much of the solar fleet sits outside net metering. Texas is the clearest case.
Terms used on this page
- Attachment rate
- The share of solar systems that also have a battery. Here measured across the installed fleet, not across current sales.
- PV-paired battery
- A battery installed with, and reported alongside, a net-metered photovoltaic system. Distinct from a standalone home battery on a house without solar.
- Net billing
- A tariff that credits exported electricity at avoided-cost values well below the retail rate. The condition that makes storage economic, and the thing the leading states have in common.
- Self-supply
- Hawaii’s uncapped post-2015 option for customers who consume all their own generation on site. Designed around storage, which is why Hawaii’s attachment rate is so high.
- Duration
- A battery’s energy capacity divided by its power rating, in hours. Used here as a plausibility check on EIA’s reported capacity figures.
Citation, reuse and corrections
How to cite this study
Full citation. HyreSolar Research, “How many solar homes actually have a battery”, September 2026. Analysis of US Energy Information Administration Form EIA-861, 2014–2024. Available at https://hyresolar.com/research/battery-attachment-by-state/
In text. “according to a HyreSolar analysis of federal utility filings” — with a link to this page.
In a chart or table. “Source: HyreSolar analysis of EIA-861 (2024)”.
What you may reuse
The underlying data is a public US government dataset and carries no restriction. The analysis, rankings, derived ratios and charts on this page are ours, and you are welcome to reproduce them — including the charts — for editorial, academic and non-commercial purposes with attribution and a link to this page.
We ask for the link rather than a bare mention because the methodology and the limitations live here. A figure quoted without them is easy to misread, and several of the numbers on this page carry conditions that change what they mean.
Who produced this
The HyreSolar research desk. We do not attach an individual byline to these studies, because the work is a scripted analysis of a public federal dataset rather than an authored opinion, and a personal byline would imply a kind of authorship that is not what happened here. What is accountable instead is the method: the source files are named, the arithmetic is stated, the extraction is scripted, and the validation is published.
HyreSolar is an independent analysis and matching service. We are not an installer, a lender or a utility, and no installer pays for placement, ranking or mention in this research. See the editorial policy.
How this study is built
Annual Form EIA-861 workbooks for 2014–2024 are downloaded from EIA and parsed by script into a single dataset. Every figure on this page — in the prose, in the tables and in every mark on every chart — is read from that dataset at build time. Nothing is typed by hand.
That is not a stylistic preference. It means a number in a sentence and the same number in the table beneath it cannot drift apart, a chart cannot disagree with its own caption, and next year's EIA release updates the entire study by regenerating one file rather than by someone editing 4,000 words and hoping they caught every instance.
The workbooks are not consistent between years — sheet names change, header rows move, a measure is renamed, a column appears in one year only, and one large utility is filed under two different spellings. The extraction addresses columns by their header meaning rather than their position, and keys utilities on their EIA number rather than their name, because every one of those inconsistencies silently produces wrong output if ignored.
Corrections
If you find an error, tell us and we will fix it on the page with a dated note rather than silently. That includes disagreements about method: the inputs are public and the arithmetic is stated, so the argument can be had on the evidence.
Update schedule
EIA publishes final Form EIA-861 data for a year in approximately October of the following year. This study is rebuilt against the new release and republished at the same URL, so links do not break and the accumulated citations stay attached to the current numbers.
Questions
What percentage of solar homes have batteries?
Which state has the highest solar battery attachment rate?
Do I need a battery with solar?
Are battery attachment rates rising?
Why does California have small batteries?
Does high electricity price drive battery adoption?
Does this include batteries without solar?
Written and audited by
HyreSolar Research
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the tariff, the code section, the federal filing or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it. Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. That rule has cost us whole sections, and it is the reason the rest can be trusted.
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How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, federal data from the agency that collects it, code text from the adopted edition, manufacturer claims from the data sheet. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we go and read the source.
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Data as of EIA-861 2024 final release. Authorship on this site is organisational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
- US EIA, Form EIA-861 — Net Metering (annual files, 2014–2024) — Utility-level net-metered capacity, installations and energy sold back by state and customer sector, plus PV-paired battery capacity and installations from 2023. Downloaded as the published annual ZIP archives. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- US EIA, Form EIA-861 — Sales to Ultimate Customers (annual files, 2014–2024) — Utility-level residential revenue, sales and customer counts by state, used to derive the average residential price and to count the households a state actually meters. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- US EIA, Form EIA-861 — Distributed Generation that is not Net Metered (2024) — Residential photovoltaic capacity served under buyback, feed-in and utility-owned arrangements rather than net metering. Capacity only; this schedule collects no installation count. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- US EIA, Average Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector — EIA’s own published state price series, used only to validate our derivation. Agreement across all 357 overlapping state-years is within 0.005¢/kWh, i.e. EIA’s own rounding. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- Rocky Mountain Power, Utah Electric Service Schedule No. 137, Net Billing Service — Export credit rates of 4.855¢/kWh (summer) and 4.033¢/kWh (winter). Schedule 135 net metering closed to new applicants 15 November 2017; Schedule 136 transition programme closed 31 October 2020. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, Docket 2014-0192, Decision and Order No. 33258 (October 2015) — Closed the net energy metering programme to new participants, replacing it with capped grid-supply and uncapped customer self-supply options. Hawaii was the first US state to end retail-rate net metering. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- California Public Utilities Commission, Decision 22-12-056 — Adopted California’s net billing tariff for new residential customers of the three investor-owned utilities, effective 15 April 2023. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- US EIA, Form EIA-861, Reliability (2024), State Totals — SAIDI and SAIFI by state, IEEE standard, all events including major event days. Used only to test and then reject grid reliability as an explanation for Michigan. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
Does a battery pay on your tariff?
Storage economics are set by your export credit and your evening load, not by a national average.
HyreSolar is an independent analysis and matching service. We are not an installer, lender or utility. When a reader asks to be introduced, installers may pay us a referral fee. That fee never buys ranking, scores or placement in research. Our editorial policy sets out the rules.