More Than a Quarter of New Homes in Southern California Come With Solar

Photo courtesy of Habitat for Humanity, East Bay

One in four new Southern California homes now come with solar. That’s the finding from a new report that examines information from the California Energy Commission’s New Solar Homes Partnership Program (NSHP). The report reviewed permits for single-family homes.

“We are seeing very strong growth in the solar market in California in new home construction which is critical to meeting Governor Brown's goal of 12 gigawatts of clean distributed generation by 2020,” said California Energy Commissioner David Hochschild.

The report defined Southern California as the 10 counties from San Luis Obispo to Imperial. Northern California is cast from north of Sacramento to the Oregon border. For 2012, it found 27 percent of new homes in Southern California were permitted for solar, 4 percent in Central California, and 8 percent in Northern California.

Source: Clean Energy States Alliance based on data provided by the California Energy Commission.

“Thanks to a variety of factors, such as builder education and outreach by solar retailers and installers,” the authors of the report wrote, “many production builders are offering solar energy systems in their Southern California communities. As cities, such as Lancaster, adopt increasingly stringent building requirements that require high levels of energy efficiency and solar energy system installations, this trend may continue.”

NSHP provides financial incentives and other support to homeowners, builders, and developers to encourage the construction of new, energy-efficient solar homes.