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ReportsUpdatedJan 22, 2024   |  4-min read
Written byMike Brown
Written byMike Brown
Expertise:
Mike Brown uses data from surveys and publicly-available resources to identify emerging personal finance trends and tell unique stories. Mike’s work, featured in outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, provides consumers with a personal finance measuring stick to make informed financial decisions.
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When it comes to being environmentally friendly, perhaps the most impactful thing any one person can do is use solar panels to power their home.
Solar panels are not only healthier for the Earth, but they can also be a cheaper longterm power source for homeowners compared to a more traditional option like gas.
However, solar power is still an emerging technology so consumers looking to buy a home powered by the sun may have limited options.
To help these prospective homebuyers and recognize some of the most eco-friendly cities in the United States, LendEDU analyzed the most up-to-date housing data for every single U.S. city to find which places have the highest proportion of solar-powered homes.
The cities below are some of the most eco-friendly places in the country and provide the best opportunities for homebuyers that are looking to own a solar-powered home.
Cities With the Highest Proportion of Eco-Friendly Homes
To see how a city ranked within only its state, either sort the table on the “State” column or type your desired state into the search bar.
To be considered for this ranking, a city had to have a minimum of 1,500 housing units, which left us with 10,974 cities. All 2,810 cities included in the table below had at least one solar-powered home.
The data found below derives from a dataset fromGreatDatathat was licensed by LendEDU. GreatData compiles the most up-to-date data and estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, in addition to calculating its own projections based on historical trends, to provide accurate and current household data for nearly 30,000 U.S. cities.
How to Finance Solar Panels For Your Home
Powering your house via solar panels has numerous benefits, but it can also be quite costly to install.
Below, LendEDU suggests a few different financing strategies if you are interested in solar panels for your home.
Personal Loan
A personal loan is one financial product that you should consider if you want to install solar panels on your home. In terms of getting a personal loan, you can find a personal loan online or through your bank. If you are married and want to improve your home by adding solar panels, there are even joint personal loans for married couples.
Additionally, because of the surging popularity of solar panels, there are even some personal loan lenders out there that offer loans specifically for solar panels.
Home Equity Loan or Line of Credit (HELOC)
If you are a homeowner and used a mortgage to finance the purchase of your home, you may have already built up some home equity by continuing to pay down your home loan. If this is the case, you could tap into your home equity by taking out either a home equity loan or home equity line of credit (HELOC) to finance your purchase of solar panels.
And if you’ve already paid off your mortgage, you can still take out a home equity loan on a paid-off house and may even receive better terms. Just be sure to brush up on common home equity loan closing costs and fees before choosing this route.
Credit Card
A credit card could certainly be used to finance the purchase of solar panels for your home, depending on your credit limit. The downside is, however, that credit cards have very high interest rates compared to the alternatives listed above.
Your best bet for using a credit card to purchase solar panels is to use a 0% APR card that has no interest for a set period of time (usually around 12 to 18 months). If you do go this route, you should be sure that you can pay off the balance before the intro APR period is over so you don’t have to pay those high interest rates.
Methodology
All data found in this report comes fromGreatData. LendEDU licensed the dataset provided by GreatData, which derives mainly from the U.S. Census Bureau. For data points like “Solar-Powered Housing Units” and “Total Housing Units,” the data comes from the most recent U.S. Census Bureau update but GreatData also calculates and combines its own projections based on historical trends to provide the most up-to-date data.
For some cities listed in the report, GreatData provided multiple ZIP Codes within the city, with each ZIP Code having its own data. In these instances, we combined all ZIP Code data for that city to provide a single stat line for each city.
To be considered for this ranking, a city had to have a minimum of 1,500 housing units, which left us with 10,974 cities. All 2,810 cities included in the table above had at least one solar-powered home.
Once each eligible city had a single statistic line for all pertinent statistics, we divided its number of solar-powered homes by its total number of housing units to find its percentage of solar-powered homes.
See more ofLendEDU’s Research here.
