Quarterly report · Q4 2026 · report updated October 5, 2026
Solar Permits in Covered California Markets — Q4 2026
This report covers 31 California cities, with 58,477 observed solar permits and 459,387 modeled parcels. These figures describe the covered markets and provide context for territory planning.
- Observed permits relative to modeled parcels
- 12.7%
- Modeled parcels
- 459,387
- Observed permits
- 58,477
- Cities covered
- 31
Observed permit rate by metro
Ranked by modeled parcel count. Each percentage compares observed permit matches with modeled parcels in the covered cells.
| Metro | Permit rate | Parcels | Permits | Cities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sacramento | 5.8% | 95,180 | 5,556 | 3 |
| San Fernando Valley | 23.5% | 65,215 | 15,335 | 9 |
| San Diego | 43.2% | 63,981 | 27,641 | 2 |
| San Jose | 3.2% | 60,943 | 1,925 | 1 |
| Inland Empire San Bernardino | 0.4% | 44,488 | 185 | 6 |
| Fresno | 6.2% | 38,894 | 2,395 | 2 |
| Bakersfield | 0.3% | 33,662 | 91 | 1 |
| Northeast LA | 16.0% | 20,124 | 3,221 | 3 |
| Ventura | 0.8% | 14,043 | 111 | 2 |
| East Bay | 7.0% | 13,306 | 926 | 1 |
| Harbor Area | 11.4% | 9,551 | 1,091 | 3 |
Observed permit rate by utility
Utility territory decides the pitch before geography does — rate structure, export credit, and bill pain all change at the boundary.
| Utility | Permit rate | Parcels | Permits |
|---|---|---|---|
| PG&E | 3.6% | 146,805 | 5,337 |
| SMUD | 5.8% | 95,180 | 5,556 |
| LADWP | 20.7% | 94,203 | 19,496 |
| SDG&E | 43.2% | 63,981 | 27,641 |
| SCE | 0.8% | 59,218 | 447 |
Lowest observed permit rates
Covered cities with the lowest observed permit-to-parcel ratios.
- Santee0.1%
- Fresno0.2%
- Hesperia0.2%
- Fontana0.3%
- Bakersfield0.3%
- Rancho Cucamonga0.5%
- Elk Grove0.6%
- Victorville0.6%
- San Bernardino0.7%
- Highland0.7%
Highest observed permit rates
Covered cities with the highest observed permit-to-parcel ratios.
- San Diego48.8%
- Porter Ranch43.0%
- Granada Hills42.2%
- Northridge38.9%
- Canoga Park36.8%
- Reseda27.7%
- Sunland27.5%
- West Hills27.5%
- Van Nuys23.8%
- Los Angeles20.7%
Method, and what these numbers can't tell you
The observed permit rate is the number of modeled parcels matched to a solar permit divided by the modeled owner-occupied single-family parcels in the same published scope. This edition includes 34 city-and-utility cells. Aggregate percentages come directly from the summed permit and parcel counts. Cells under 30 parcels are dropped before publication, so no figure here can be walked back to a household.
A cell also has to clear a coverage bar of 10 permits on record to appear at all. Permit adapters come online market by market, and a city with a single permit across ten thousand parcels tells you about our ingestion, not about its rooftops. Counting those as zero would hand you a “least saturated” list built from missing data — so they are held back until the records land.
The engine matches permit records to modeled parcels by parcel number when available and by normalized address plus ZIP code as a fallback. A parcel counts once even when more than one matching permit record is present. Source coverage and publication schedules vary by jurisdiction, and this report does not claim that every source is complete through October 5, 2026.
Coverage is the markets KnockGenius has ingested and verified, not all of California. A city absent from this report has no verified data behind it yet — which is different from having no solar.
A parcel without an observed solar permit in this dataset is not proof that it lacks solar or is available for a sale.
Questions
- How is the observed permit rate calculated?
- The report divides observed solar-permit matches by modeled owner-occupied single-family parcels. It computes each published rate from permit and parcel counts after limiting the dataset to city-and-utility cells with at least 30 parcels and 10 observed permits.
- Why would a city I know be missing?
- Because its permit records have not landed yet. County and municipal permit adapters come online market by market, and a city with one permit on file across ten thousand parcels is unmeasured, not unsaturated — publishing it as 0% would be a data-ingestion artifact dressed up as a finding. Those cells are held back until coverage clears the bar.
- Why is the covered-market number parcel-weighted?
- Averaging city percentages would let a 40-parcel cell count as much as a 4,000-parcel city. The covered-market figure divides the total observed permits by the total modeled parcels across included cells.
- How current is this data?
- The date above is when the freshest included area-stat cell was updated in KnockGenius. It is not one collection date shared by every source. Jurisdictions publish on different schedules, and this report does not certify that each source is complete through that date.
Citing this report
Free to quote with attribution to KnockGenius, Solar Permits in Covered California Markets, Q4 2026. The per-city and per-utility breakdowns behind these tables are public at /solar-territories.