Insights: Aurora Proprietary Data
There is no shortage of data about the solar industry out there today, and certainly all data sources add something important to the picture. What makes Aurora’s proprietary project data especially valuable in this sea of data? First, Aurora software is used by 80 percent of the top 75 U.S. residential solar installers, according to Wood MacKenzie. With over 7,000 customers creating more than 100,000 projects per week, Aurora has the largest database of solar project designs of any solar software provider.
For this report we analyzed more than six million projects from 2021 and 2022. This data uncovered some macro trends, and provides an accurate snapshot of what the U.S. residential solar market looks like now, and how it is changing.
The thing that jumps off the screen is that solar continues to grow impressively year over year. No matter what region we consider, the number of Aurora projects in the U.S. rose significantly — nearly 40 percent year over year for the whole country. This dovetails nicely with other industry data, including SEIA’s Solar Market Insight Report, which says, “Residential solar had a record year [in 2022] with nearly 6 GWdc of installations, representing 40 percent growth over 2021.”
Along with project counts rising, system sizes continue to grow. The average cost per watt also grew across the U.S., bucking a more than a decade-long trend of declining price per watt costs, according to SEIA.
Of homeowners have solar or are interested in purchasing it.
U.S. solar project counts within Aurora grew by nearly 40% YoY.
As we can see below, all this data together gives us a unique look at the state of the residential solar market. But what about the homeowners that are putting those panels on their roofs, taking advantage of those incentives, and ultimately paying that price per watt?
Our next dataset digs down into the minds of U.S. homeowners and their impressions about solar.