The State(s) of Distributed Solar — 2024 Update by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), analyzed the saturation of each state’s distributed (non-utility-scale) solar market, relative to state population, at the end of 2024. Overall, they found that distributed solar made up nearly 17 percent or 5.4 gigawatts (GW) of the 32GW of total solar capacity installed.
ILSR shows that in 23 states and DC, approximately one in 25 households has rooftop solar. In contrast, Wisconsin has close to one out of 100 households worth of rooftop solar or 46 watts per household. Surrounding Wisconsin, Minnesota has 211 watts of solar per person, Illinois 147 watts per person, and Iowa 103 watts per person. Minnesota leads all states in the amount of community solar that contributes to their distributed solar achievement while Wisconsin does not yet have a law that enables third-party community solar farms (see Wisbusiness).