Every year, rooftop solar panels become more accessible to the average American, as demonstrated by a recent report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It says the median income level of homes installing solar panels is sinking, Canary Media reported.
In 2010, homes that installed solar panels that year had a median income of $141,000. But in 2023, that number was $115,000 — $26,000 lower.
"Solar has gotten cheaper, and so that has made it more accessible to a broader swath of the population," said Galen Barbose, a co-author of the report, per Canary Media.
Not only have solar panels gotten cheaper, but there have been new government policies aimed at making solar more affordable for lower-income households. Not only that, but new options such as solar leasing have arisen that ensure homeowners don't have to pay the full cost of buying and installing panels upfront to have access to solar.
In fact, the median income of households with solar panels is getting closer and closer to the median income of owner-occupied households. Since renters can't install solar without the landlord's approval, that means that solar access is expanding to almost the entire group of people with the power to choose to install it in their homes.
There are some worrying aspects of the current situation, though, Canary Media revealed. In short, lower-income households are still less likely to get the full financial benefit of solar panels.
The gap between median owner-occupied households and median households installing solar is still wide in some states. Also, lower-income households are more likely to lease than to buy, which is more budget-friendly in the short term but less profitable in the long run.
"Distributed solar has for a long time benefited from public policy, from policies that, ultimately, everybody is paying for whether it's through tax credits or through utility rates," Barbose told Canary Media. "Because the cost of these policies is being borne broadly, it's important that the benefits also accrue broadly. And so one of the motivations for this report is to kind of track and document the progress towards achieving a more equitable, proportional distribution of those benefits."
However, the news is still promising — and it's likely to look even better next year when the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act become visible.
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Energy independence ⚡ "More people can access solar in new places and also within places where the market already existed," said Sydney Forrester, another report co-author, per Canary Media.
That can only be a good thing.
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