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Top Ten Solar Energy States: Idiotic List but Interesting

If you like top ten lists as much as the next person, then you should probably read No. 1 in Wine and Porn! The Idiocy of State Rankings in this month’s The Atlantic.

As the author properly summarizes our natural inclinations to see where we stand: “there’s nothing quite so irresistible as a juicy ranking, and for good reason. Who doesn’t want to know how their neighbors stack up against the rest of the country?” The author’s conclusion: these rankings are a “waste of time.”  The problem is that depending on who your audience is, you can easily manipulate the data.  In most of these rankings, the data are seriously skewed to make the results almost meaningless. 50.jpg

Nevertheless, we didn’t want you to feel left out and so we compiled the first ever SolarTown rankings.  We looked at the users of SolarTown.com over the past twelve months and here are the top rankings of the states that contribute to the traffic on SolarTown.  If you are reading this blog entry, then you probably (but not necessarily) come from one of the following states:

  1. California (1)
  2. Texas (2)
  3. New York (3)
  4. Florida (4)
  5. Maryland (19)
  6. Pennsylvania (6)
  7. Illinois (5)
  8. New Jersey (11)
  9. Arizona (15)
  10. Virginia (12)

We also included in parentheses in our top ten list the most populous states. Not surprisingly, the most populous state, California, is also the home of the largest number of SolarTown users. Congratulations California!

The only somewhat minor surprise is Maryland, the 19th most populous state in the United States, but number 5 on our list. We assume that this interest in SolarTown from our neighbors in Maryland is due to both the proximity of Maryland to Washington, D.C., our home and also because of Maryland’s abiding interest in solar energy. It is number 10 on the list of states based on capacity in the second quarter of 2013, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Maryland is putting up a lot of solar panels in 2013. Now that is an accomplishment, Maryland.

In our top ten list, only California, New York, Pennsylvania and Arizona are on the top ten list of states with the cumulative installed solar electric capacity.  The other states on our list may be where the future lies.  Look at Texas, for example, which is not a particular solar-friendly state, but there are a lot of SolarTown users from Texas. 

And which is the city with the most SolarTown users.  Did you guess Los Angeles, as I did?  Wrong.  It is actually New York, New York.  Thank you Big Apple for your support!

What may be more interesting is the top ten countries that are using SolarTown.com. They are not buying one of our home solar panels for an off grid job in Bangladesh, but they are using our SolarTown Learning Center. We are saving the results for another blog post.  You can think big population and you should think English-speaking because all of our articles are in English.