Solar by state
Solar in Rhode Island, by the numbers
Utilities and their rates, adoption, ten years of growth, batteries, ownership, state rules and installer licensing in Rhode Island, from federal 2024 data.
Rhode Island in brief
3.79% of Rhode Island homes had rooftop solar in 2024, the 13th-highest of 51 (3.55% nationally). Power cost 28.65¢/kWh, above the national 16.48¢, and the average system was 6.12 kW. The Narragansett Electric Company serves 98.7% of homes.
Where does Rhode Island stand out?
The four measures, beyond price and adoption, on which Rhode Island sits furthest from the middle of the ranking.
Rhode Island solar in numbers, 2024
Every Rhode Island figure next to the national one, with its place in the ranking (highest first, out of the jurisdictions reporting it).
| Measure | Rhode Island | United States | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homes with a metered rooftop system | 3.79% | 3.55% | 13th-highest of 51 |
| Rooftop systems counted | 17,321 | 5,077,543 | 19th-lowest of 51 |
| Average system size | 6.12 kW | 6.74 kW | 9th-lowest of 51 |
| Residential price | 28.65¢/kWh | 16.48¢/kWh | 5th-highest of 51 |
| Average monthly bill | $162.40 | $142.26 | 7th-highest of 51 |
| Use per home | 6,802 kWh/yr | 10,359 kWh/yr | 4th-lowest of 51 |
| Systems with a battery | 6.67% | 5.86% | 7th-highest of 47 |
| Leased or on a PPA | 35.5% | 29.1% | 9th-highest of 38 |
| Growth in systems, five years | 35.9% a year | — | 10th-highest of 51 |
| Minutes without power per customer | 104 | 297 (median state) | 6th-lowest of 51 |
| Homes on a time-varying rate | 0.00% | 11.1% | lowest of 51 |
| Installed rooftop capacity | 106.0 MW | 34,226 MW | — |
Source: US EIA, Form EIA-861, 2024 final release, retrieved 2 September 2026. The Rhode Island ratios and ranks are HyreSolar calculations from EIA inputs.
Which utility serves Rhode Island, and what does it charge?
The 3 largest utilities selling to Rhode Island homes, by residential customers, with the price full-service customers paid and how many run net-metered solar.
| Utility | Type | Homes served | Price per kWh | Use per home, monthly | Net-metered systems |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Narragansett Electric Company | Investor-owned; wires, 74% on its own supply | 451,381 (98.7%) | 28.26¢ | 559 kWh | 17,216 (3.8%) |
| Pascoag Utility District | Municipal | 4,373 (0.96%) | 16.52¢ | 686 kWh | 7 (0.16%) |
| Block Island Utility District | Public power district | 1,629 (0.36%) | 39.66¢ | 388 kWh | 98 (6.0%) |
Source: US EIA, Form EIA-861 2024, Sales to Ultimate Customers and Net Metering, utility level, retrieved 5 October 2026. Shares are of 457,383 Rhode Island residential accounts. Each Rhode Island price is residential revenue divided by sales for full-service customers (HyreSolar calculation); a wires company’s price is its default-service price.
What do the Rhode Island utility figures mean for a solar quote?
EIA-861 lists 3 utilities serving homes in Rhode Island in 2024, across 457,383 residential accounts. The three largest, The Narragansett Electric Company, Pascoag Utility District and Block Island Utility District, served 100.0% of those homes. By ownership: investor-owned utilities 98.7% and municipal utilities 1.0%.
118,841 Rhode Island homes (26.0%) bought their energy from 14 competitive suppliers, while the local utility kept delivering it. On a supplier, the energy price on your bill is the supplier’s, so price a solar quote against your own bill rather than the utility prices in the table.
The Narragansett Electric Company, the largest, served 451,381 Rhode Island homes (98.7%). Its full-service residential customers paid 28.26¢ per kWh, below the Rhode Island average of 28.65¢, and used 559 kWh a month on average. 17,216 of its customers ran net-metered rooftop solar, 3.8% of its homes against 3.79% statewide.
Only one Rhode Island utility with 5,000 or more homes reported a full-service price, so there is no in-state spread to quote; your own bill is the rate to test a quote against.
Rooftop solar is concentrated: The Narragansett Electric Company alone accounts for 17,216 net-metered residential systems, about 99% of the 17,321 counted in Rhode Island, and 3 Rhode Island utilities reported any at all.
What does power cost in Rhode Island, and why does it matter?
Residential electricity in Rhode Island averaged 28.65¢ per kilowatt-hour in 2024, the 5th-highest of 51 and above the national 16.48¢. That is one of the highest residential prices in the country.
Each kilowatt-hour a system covers on site is one not bought at that price, so self-consumption carries more value in Rhode Island than in all but a handful of states.
The average Rhode Island household bill was $162.40 a month ($1,949 a year), the 7th-highest of 51, against $142.26 nationally. That $1,949 is the ceiling on what solar could save a typical Rhode Island home, before fixed monthly charges.
Almost no Rhode Island homes were on a time-varying rate in 2024 (11.1% nationally), so a flat rate is the likely starting point. 1.1% of Rhode Island residential meters were smart meters (83.8% nationally), and a time-varying rate needs one. How time-of-use changes solar.
How many Rhode Island homes have solar?
Rhode Island had 17,321 rooftop systems on net metering in 2024, across 457,383 residential accounts: 3.79% of homes, the 13th-highest of 51. By national standards Rhode Island is a mature market, which can mean several installers to compare and a permit office that has handled solar before.
The Rhode Island market counted 3,297 more systems in 2024 than in 2023 and has grown 35.9% a year over five years, the 10th-highest of 51. Where growth has turned nationally.
How has Rhode Island solar changed since 2014?
Rhode Island counted 322 net-metered rooftop systems in 2014 and 17,321 in 2024, 53.8 times as many. The share of homes with one moved from 0.07% to 3.79%. The biggest one-year addition came in 2023, with 5,003 more systems than the year before.
| Year | Rooftop systems | Share of homes | Average size | Residential price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 322 | 0.07% | 4.4 kW | 17.17¢ |
| 2016 | 1,370 | 0.31% | 5.6 kW | 18.62¢ |
| 2018 | 2,649 | 0.60% | 5.8 kW | 20.55¢ |
| 2020 | 5,023 | 1.14% | 6.5 kW | 22.01¢ |
| 2022 | 9,021 | 2.01% | 6.4 kW | 23.21¢ |
| 2024 | 17,321 | 3.79% | 6.1 kW | 28.65¢ |
Source: US EIA, Form EIA-861 annual files 2014–2024, net-metered residential systems, retrieved 2 September 2026. Rhode Island shares and sizes are HyreSolar calculations.
What does the Rhode Island trend mean for a savings estimate?
Over the same years the Rhode Island residential price went from 17.17¢ to 28.65¢ per kWh, up 67%, and the average system from 4.4 kW to 6.1 kW.
A rate that has risen that far makes a 2024 bill a conservative base for a Rhode Island savings estimate only if the trend continues, which nobody can promise.
How big is a typical Rhode Island system?
The average Rhode Island system was 6.12 kW in 2024, the 9th-lowest of 51, against 6.74 kW nationally. Rhode Island homes used 6,802 kilowatt-hours a year each, the 4th-lowest of 51.
A Rhode Island home using 6,802 kWh is an average, not a design input: size from your own twelve months of bills and usable roof with cost by system size and the system size calculator.
Who owns the systems in Rhode Island?
In Rhode Island, 35.5% of systems were third-party owned in 2024: leased, or on a power purchase agreement (PPA), rather than owned by the household. That is the 9th-highest of 38, against 29.1% nationally.
Leases and power purchase agreements are a large share of the Rhode Island market, so expect one to be offered alongside a purchase. Whoever owns a Rhode Island system claims any tax credit on it: Section 48E explained.
Do Rhode Island homes add batteries?
In Rhode Island, 6.67% of solar systems were paired with a battery in 2024 (1,155 systems), the 7th-highest of 47. Rhode Island’s share is above the national 5.86%.
On reliability, the average Rhode Island customer went 104 minutes without power in 2024 counting major storms, and 61 minutes without them. The median state saw 297. Outages in every state.
Whether a battery pays in Rhode Island turns on your utility’s export credit and your own outage history: what a home battery does.
How do you check a solar company’s license in Rhode Island?
We found no dedicated state register for solar work in Rhode Island, so we publish no company counts. That is not evidence of light regulation: electrical work can be licensed at state or local level even where solar is never named.
With 17,321 systems in Rhode Island, the company quoting you may be based out of state. Ask which license it holds, in which state, and confirm it with that authority. What to do when the search comes back empty.
Which states are closest to Rhode Island on adoption?
The six jurisdictions nearest to Rhode Island’s 3.79% share of homes with rooftop solar.
Where do the Rhode Island numbers come from?
The Rhode Island figures are HyreSolar calculations from the Form EIA-861 annual files: 17,321 net-metered residential systems counted against 457,383 residential accounts, sizes as means, and 3 utility-level rows for the utility table, matched to net-metering records by EIA utility number.
The method and limits cover all 51; the Rhode Island row is in the data as a CSV.
No Rhode Island figure here is an estimate for one home: your roof, usage, utility tariff and tax position decide that.
Your inquiry
Tell us about your home
Nothing goes to a solar professional unless you agree.
Free, with no obligation: a person reads it and gets back to you. Matching is not live yet, so this is not a quote.
Get Solar Options
If you have done your research and want to speak with a solar professional, HyreSolar can help you explore available options.
Questions
How many homes in Rhode Island have solar?
What size solar system is typical in Rhode Island?
Do Rhode Island homeowners add batteries to solar?
Is Rhode Island a good state for solar?
Which utility serves the most homes in Rhode Island?
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 why the rest can be checked.
- 160
- primary sources read and cited
- 228
- 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 modeling from our own reasoning, and label which is which on the page. A laboratory measurement, an assumption inside a modeling 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 favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of EIA-861 2024 final release. Authorship on this site is organizational: 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.