Residential solar permits in North Carolina.

A solar permit is the moment a specific North Carolina home committed to a specific project, weeks after the sale and weeks to months before the install. This page publishes what Scout Data’s permit database shows for the state: 5,662 residential solar permits in 2025 and 10,620 over the 24 months from September 2024 through August 2026, on 9,405 distinct homes. The national picture is on the U.S. solar permit statistics page; the methodology is at the bottom.

2025 permits

5,662

Homes with solar

1.47%

Median declared value

$28,300

Battery attach, 2025

36.0%

Residential solar permits in North Carolina by year

Permits filed each year since 2015, and the number of distinct homes behind them. A single project can carry more than one permit, so homes run below permits.

North Carolina’s tracked permitting peaked in 2022 at 10,422 permits. 2025 came in at 5,662, down 39% from 2023. The 2026 row covers January through August only and should not be read against a full year. Early years understate activity more than recent ones, because jurisdiction coverage has grown over time; every figure is a floor on true activity.

Where the permits are: North Carolina’s busiest counties

The ten counties with the most residential solar permits from September 2024 through August 2026. Wake County alone is about 20% of the state’s total.

How many North Carolina homes already have solar

Permits measure flow. Aerial imagery measures the stock. Of 2,946,606 single-family roofs in North Carolina that have been classified from the air, 43,411 carry panels: 1.47%, which ranks 23rd among states (the full ranking is on homes with solar by state). Read the other way, about 2,903,195 single-family homes in the state have no panels yet, which is the addressable market a solar sales team is actually working. 2,169,849 of the state’s 3,097,779 single-family homes are owner-occupied.

Batteries on North Carolina solar permits

Of 5,662 residential solar permits filed in North Carolina in 2025, 2,040 record energy storage as part of the job, an attach rate of 36.0%. This is a floor: a permit whose description never mentions storage counts as having none, so the number mixes real adoption with how much detail the state’s permit offices write down. The national curve, and why it broke upward in 2024, is on solar battery attachment rates.

The bankruptcy overhang in North Carolina

6,784 North Carolina homes hold a residential solar permit filed under the name of an installer on the Scout Data bankrupt installer list, on or before that company’s petition or closure date. Each is a homeowner with a system, or a half-finished project, and no company behind it, which is the population the orphaned solar systems opportunity and the bankrupt-installer datasets are built on.

Other states

The same statistics for California, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Nevada, Massachusetts, Virginia, Hawaii, Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut. More states are added each week; the index is at solar permits by state, and the national totals are on the U.S. solar permit statistics page.

Methodology

• Source. Scout Data’s production permit database, 120M+ building permits across 2,456 U.S. counties, joined to property records on 160M+ properties and to an aerial roof classification of single-family homes.
• What is counted. Residential permits whose own text names a solar, photovoltaic or PV installation, one row per permit at its latest status. Commercial, agricultural and utility-scale projects are excluded, and so are permits with no usable issue date. This is the same cohort as the battery attachment page; the national statistics page was derived earlier under a slightly wider deduplication rule, so its annual totals run a few percent above the sum of the state pages.
• Windows. The year table uses the permit issue year, with 2026 covering January through August. County rankings, home counts and declared values cover September 2024 through August 2026.
• Valuations. Median declared valuation on permits carrying a non-zero value, computed exactly rather than sampled, and shown only where at least 200 permits carry one. Jurisdictions differ in what value they require; treat the median as conservative.
• Rooftop solar. The denominator is single-family homes whose roof has an aerial classification, not all homes, because an unclassified roof would otherwise read as no solar. The share is published only where at least 60% of the state’s single-family roofs are classified.
• Batteries. A 2025 permit counts as recording storage when its text says so. Jurisdiction form boilerplate that mentions batteries as an instruction to applicants, rather than as installed equipment, is excluded. Rates are floors and are shown only for states with at least 1,000 permits in the year.
• Bankrupt installers. Homes with a permit whose installer name starts with a company name, or alias, on the bankrupt installer list, filed on or before that company’s petition or closure date where one is known. This is narrower than the permit-level rule on the national bankruptcy page, whose totals are therefore larger.
• Coverage. Not every jurisdiction publishes permits and Scout Data does not ingest every one that does. All counts are floors on true activity. States with fewer than 1,000 permits in the trailing 24 months do not get a page.

Derived September 16, 2026. If you spot something that looks wrong, tell us; we would rather correct a number than defend it.

Frequently asked questions