Original research
Rooftop solar is a local trade with a national storefront
Licence footprints for 2,062 solar companies, checked one state authority at a time.
The finding
Key findings
- 1 96% of verified solar companies are licensed in exactly one state
1,739 of 1,806 companies with a completed verification. Rooftop solar is structurally a local trade.
- 2 Only 5 companies reach ten states or more
Sunrun, Palmetto Solar, Tesla Energy, Freedom Forever, Complete Solar. These are the names most homeowners have heard of, and they are a rounding error in the count of companies.
- 3 There is no such thing as "a solar licence" nationally
Some states have a dedicated solar classification, some route it through electrical, some through a general contractor specialty, and several issue no relevant state licence at all.
- 4 In several states the absence of a state licence is normal
Ohio excludes one-, two- and three-family dwellings from state electrical licensing entirely. New York licenses at municipal level. Reading "no state licence" as a red flag in those states is a mistake.
- 5 Texas began regulating solar retailers on 1 September 2026
Under SB 1036, residential solar retailers and salespersons must now register with TDLR: a regime aimed at the sales channel rather than the installation trade, and the first of its kind.
- 6 Company headquarters are concentrated
560 of the verified companies are in CA alone, though that partly reflects where our verification is most complete.
Read the scope before the finding
The installer footprint study covers 2,062 solar companies checked against licensing authorities in 27 states. It is not a census of the US solar industry and does not claim to be. What it can support is a statement about the companies in it, and that statement is strong enough to be worth publishing.
Coverage is uneven by design: it reflects where we have completed verification, not where solar happens. CA has 560 verified companies in the set; NY has 7. The state-level counts below should be read as our coverage, not as a market size.
The shape of the industry
Solar marketing is national. The advertising, the finance products, the door-knocking scripts and the brand names travel across state lines effortlessly. Licensing does not. Every state decides for itself which licence class authorises photovoltaic work, and as the table below shows, they have reached remarkably different answers.
The consequence shows up clearly when you check companies one authority at a time: 96% of verified companies hold a licence in exactly one state. The industry’s structure is thousands of local electrical and roofing businesses, with a very small number of national brands layered on top of them, brands that in many cases do not perform the installation themselves.
The distribution is extremely skewed
Almost the entire distribution sits at one state. The tail thins immediately: 41 companies in two states, and only 67 in more than one at all.
How many states each company is licensed in
| States licensed in | Companies | Share of verified set | Cumulative share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 state | 1,739 | 96.3% | 96.3% |
| 2 states | 41 | 2.3% | 98.6% |
| 3 states | 9 | 0.5% | 99.1% |
| 4 states | 3 | 0.2% | 99.2% |
| 5 states | 6 | 0.3% | 99.6% |
| 7 states | 1 | 0.1% | 99.6% |
| 8 states | 1 | 0.1% | 99.7% |
| 9 states | 1 | 0.1% | 99.7% |
| 10 states | 1 | 0.1% | 99.8% |
| 14 states | 1 | 0.1% | 99.8% |
| 20 states | 3 | 0.2% | 100.0% |
HyreSolar contractor verification database, August 2026. 256 further records had no state verification completed and are excluded from the shares.
The companies that do operate across many states
| Company | Headquarters | States with a verified licence record |
|---|---|---|
| Sunrun | CA | 20 |
| Palmetto Solar | NC | 20 |
| Tesla Energy | CA | 20 |
| Freedom Forever | CA | 14 |
| Complete Solar | UT | 10 |
| Sunnova | CA | 9 |
| Momentum Solar | NJ | 8 |
| Trinity Solar | NJ | 7 |
Companies with verified licence records in seven or more of the 27 states covered. HyreSolar contractor verification database, August 2026.
This counts the states where we hold a verified licence record, within our 27-state coverage. It is a floor on each company's true footprint, not a complete map of it, and it says nothing about current standing.
There is no such thing as “a solar licence”
The single most useful thing this database contains is not the footprint distribution. It is the answer to a question homeowners ask constantly and almost nobody answers precisely: what licence does a solar installer actually need in my state?
There is no national answer. California has a dedicated solar classification, the C-46, but a C-46 covers only solar-incidental electrical work, so a job needing a main panel upgrade also needs a C-10 electrical contractor. Texas has no solar licence at all and routes the work through the TDLR electrical contractor licence. Virginia attaches an Alternative Energy Systems specialty to a general contractor licence. Louisiana has a dedicated S.12 Solar Energy Equipment classification. Massachusetts has no solar class and requires two separate credentials.
And in several states the absence of a state licence is entirely normal rather than a warning sign. Ohio statute excludes one-, two- and three-family dwellings from state electrical licensing. New York issues no statewide contractor, home-improvement or solar licence at all: it is a municipal matter. A homeowner told to “check they’re state licensed” in those states is being given advice that cannot be followed.
What authorises residential solar work, by state
| State | Licence class that authorises residential PV | Issuing authority | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | C-46 Solar, or C-10 Electrical, or Class B General Building | CSLB | A dedicated solar classification exists. C-46 covers solar-incidental electrical work only; a panel upgrade or new subpanel needs a C-10. |
| Texas | TDLR Electrical Contractor (TECL) | TDLR | No solar contractor licence exists. Solar PV is authorised through the electrical licence under Occupations Code Ch. 1305. |
| Arizona | ROC CR-11 Electrical | AZ ROC | No PV-specific ROC classification exists; the electrical classification authorises residential photovoltaic work. |
| North Carolina | NCBEEC Electrical, Limited classification or above | NCBEEC | Authorises residential solar PV at any project value under N.C.G.S. 87. |
| Virginia | DPOR contractor licence with the Alternative Energy Systems (AES) specialty | Virginia DPOR | A named solar specialty attached to a general contractor licence rather than a standalone class. |
| Nevada | NSCB licence in a PV-authorising classification | Nevada State Contractors Board | Classifications defined at NAC 624.200. |
| Louisiana | S.12 Solar Energy Equipment | Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors | A dedicated solar classification. |
| Massachusetts | No solar licence class | OCABR and state electrical board | Authorised through two independent entity-level credentials: Home Improvement Contractor registration to contract, plus an electrical licence to perform the work. |
| Ohio | No state electrical licence for residential work | OCILB | R.C. 4740.01(F) excludes one-, two- and three-family dwellings from state electrical licensing, so the absence of a state licence is not a risk signal here. |
| Missouri | No general statewide contractor licence | Division of Professional Registration | A statewide electrical contractor licence exists but is not universally required; municipal licensing governs much residential work. |
| New York | No statewide contractor, home-improvement or solar licence | NYSERDA (registry, not a licence) | Licensing is municipal. The NY-Sun participating contractor registry is a programme roster, not a licence. |
| Washington | L&I Electrical Contractor registration | Washington L&I | No PV-specific credential; the electrical registration authorises the electrical scope of the work. |
Compiled from HyreSolar verification records that cite the statute or licence class, with California, Texas, Ohio and Arizona re-checked against the issuing authority in September 2026.
Twelve of the 27 states in our database, being those where our records carry an explicit statutory basis. This is a description of what authorises the work, not legal advice, and licence rules change, verify with the issuing authority before relying on it.
New as of yesterday: Texas now regulates solar retailers
Texas Senate Bill 1036, the Residential Solar Retailer Regulatory Act, took effect on 1 September 2025 for contract and right-to-cancel provisions. From 1 September 2026 (the day before this study was published) residential solar retailers and solar salespersons must be registered with TDLR.
This is a different kind of regulation from a contractor licence. It targets the sales channel rather than the installation trade, which is precisely where the consumer complaints in this industry concentrate. Texas is also, on our measure, the state whose rooftop solar market is most invisible to the standard federal dataset, so it is now the state with the most sales oversight and the least measurement.
Why this matters to a homeowner
The brand on the advertisement is frequently not the entity that pulls the permit. National sales organisations routinely subcontract installation to local companies, which is legal and often perfectly fine, but it means the licence, the workmanship warranty and the entity you would have to pursue in a dispute may all belong to a business you have never heard of.
The single practical response is to ask which legal entity will hold the permit and which licence number it will be pulled under, then check that number with the state authority yourself before signing. It takes a few minutes and it is the only step in the process that verifies the company rather than the pitch.
Our company profiles record the licence number, the issuing authority, the class and the retrieval date for every company we have verified, including, explicitly, the cases where we could not establish something.
Verifying an installer before you sign
- Ask which legal entity pulls the permit
Get the name exactly as registered, not the brand. If the sales company and the installing company differ, you need both names and you need to know which one holds your workmanship warranty.
- Ask for the licence number and the class
A number alone is not enough, in California a C-46 and a C-10 authorise different scopes of work, and a job needing a panel upgrade needs the C-10.
- Check it with the issuing authority, not with the company
Every state board in the table above publishes a public search. Check the number yourself; a screenshot supplied by a salesperson is not verification.
- Know what "no state licence" means where you live
In Ohio, New York and Missouri, residential work may legitimately sit outside state licensing. Verify against the municipal requirement instead rather than assuming a problem.
- Do not treat a national brand as a substitute for checking
A recognisable name tells you about the marketing organisation, not about the crew, the licence or the entity on your contract.
Where our verification is complete
Published so readers can judge which state-level statements this database can and cannot support. A company’s absence from a state here means we have not verified it there, not that it is unlicensed there.
Verification coverage, every state covered
| State | Companies verified | Share of verified records |
|---|---|---|
| CA | 560 | 28.0% |
| WI | 125 | 6.3% |
| MD | 94 | 4.7% |
| UT | 83 | 4.2% |
| FL | 77 | 3.9% |
| MI | 71 | 3.6% |
| NM | 70 | 3.5% |
| OH | 70 | 3.5% |
| AZ | 65 | 3.3% |
| GA | 63 | 3.2% |
| NJ | 62 | 3.1% |
| CO | 61 | 3.1% |
| MA | 59 | 3.0% |
| MO | 58 | 2.9% |
| OR | 57 | 2.9% |
| NC | 57 | 2.9% |
| MN | 55 | 2.8% |
| WA | 55 | 2.8% |
| PA | 52 | 2.6% |
| LA | 48 | 2.4% |
| HI | 45 | 2.3% |
| VA | 29 | 1.5% |
| CT | 27 | 1.4% |
| IL | 26 | 1.3% |
| NV | 11 | 0.6% |
| TX | 11 | 0.6% |
| NY | 7 | 0.4% |
Our coverage, not a market size. A company may appear in more than one state, so the shares sum across records rather than companies.
Methodology
How a company gets into this dataset
Companies are identified from state licensing registers, then each record is checked against the issuing authority for that state. Every record stores the source URL, the authority name, the retrieval date and the query needed to reproduce the lookup. Records retrieved from state licensing authorities between June and August 2026.
Where a register is not publicly queryable, or returned an access error, that is recorded on the record as an unresolved lookup rather than treated as an absence. 256 records carry no state verification for this reason and are excluded from every share on this page.
What "licensed in a state" means here
That we hold a verified licence record for that company from that state's issuing authority. Because states license solar work under different classes (electrical, general building, a dedicated solar classification, or nothing at all) the record also stores which class was found and the statutory basis on which it authorises photovoltaic work.
How the licensing table was built
Each row is drawn from verification records that cite the statute or licence class explicitly, rather than from a general reading of state law. California, Texas, Ohio and Arizona were additionally re-checked against the issuing authority in September 2026 before publication.
Only twelve of the 27 covered states appear, being those where the records carry an explicit statutory basis. The others are covered in the database but their regime statements are not firm enough to publish as a general rule, and we would rather show twelve solid rows than 27 with five of them shaky.
What this study cannot tell you
It is not a market share study. A company licensed in twenty states may install fewer systems than one licensed in one. Nothing here measures volume, revenue or installations.
It is not a compliance finding. We do not publish per-company claims about a licence not being current. A database snapshot taken on one date is not evidence of a company's standing today, and presenting it as such would be a claim about a named business that this data cannot support.
Coverage is partial. 27 states, not 50. A company's absence from a state in this dataset means we have not verified it there.
It is not legal advice. The licensing table describes what our records show authorises the work. Rules change, and a homeowner or contractor should verify with the issuing authority.
Terms used on this page
- Licence classification
- The category of work a contractor licence authorises. Solar sits under different classifications in different states, dedicated, electrical, or a general contractor specialty.
- C-46
- California’s dedicated solar contractor classification. Covers solar-incidental electrical work only; broader electrical work needs a C-10.
- TECL
- Texas Electrical Contractor Licence, issued by TDLR. The credential that authorises solar PV work in a state with no solar-specific licence.
- Solar retailer
- The entity that sells the system, which may be distinct from the entity that installs it. Texas began registering these separately on 1 September 2026 under SB 1036.
- Multi-state footprint
- Holding a verified licence record in more than one state. True of 3.7% of the companies in this dataset.
Citation, reuse and corrections
How to cite this study
Full citation. HyreSolar Research, “Rooftop solar is a local trade with a national storefront”, September 2026. Analysis of US Energy Information Administration Form EIA-861, 2014–2024. Available at https://hyresolar.com/research/installer-footprint/
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
Are solar installers national companies?
Does my solar installer need a licence?
What licence does a solar installer need in California?
Is there a solar licence in Texas?
Is the company in the advertisement the company on my roof?
My installer has no state licence. Is that a red flag?
How complete is this dataset?
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.
- 160
- primary sources read and cited
- 220
- figures with a retrieval date
- 115
- federal and state government sources
- 66
- researched pages published
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.
- Every figure carries its provenance. A named document and the date we retrieved it, so you can check it and so you know how old it is. Retrieval dates are not decoration: an EIA rate from May is a different fact from an EIA rate from August.
- We publish what we could not verify. Every research page carries a section naming the things we tried to establish and could not, and why. A paywalled standard, a state website that refused the request, a manufacturer that publishes no figure at all.
- We separate measurement from modelling from our own reasoning, and label which is which on the page. A laboratory measurement, an assumption inside a modelling tool and our own inference are three different kinds of claim and they are never presented as one.
- We do not sell solar, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favourable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of HyreSolar contractor verification database, August 2026. 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
- HyreSolar contractor verification database — 2,062 solar company records checked against state licensing authorities in 27 states. Each record stores the issuing authority, licence class, source URL, retrieval date and a reproducible query. Retrieved August 2026.
- California Contractors State License Board, C-46 Solar classification — Definition and scope of the C-46 solar contractor classification, and its relationship to C-10 electrical work. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Residential Solar Retailers — SB 1036, the Residential Solar Retailer Regulatory Act. Contract and right-to-cancel provisions effective 1 September 2025; registration of residential solar retailers and salespersons required from 1 September 2026. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Electricians — Electrical contractor licensing under Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1305, the credential that authorises solar PV work in Texas. Retrieved 2 September 2026.
- State contractor licensing authorities (various) — Primary source for every verification. Named individually on each company profile rather than aggregated here, because the authority, licence class and statutory basis differ by state. Retrieved June–August 2026.
Check a company before you sign
Licence number, issuing authority, class and current status, with the source we used and the date we checked.
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.