Chattanooga’s All Permits file lists 1,862 residential electrical permits applied for in 2025, in line with the 1,760-2,160 a year since 2018. Few of them are for rooftop solar now. Counting homes (distinct street addresses) whose residential electrical permit describes a solar, photovoltaic, PV-module or roof-mounted array installation, permits were applied for at 27 homes in 2020, 27 in 2021 and 31 in 2022. The count was 13 in 2023, 5 in 2024 and 9 in 2025. From 1 January to 29 September 2026 there is one.

The 2020-2022 average was 28 homes a year. The 2024-2025 average was 7, a drop of 75%. That is below the 2016-2019 average of 9.5 homes a year. Solar’s share of residential electrical permits went from 1.36% (85 of 6,273) in 2020-2022 to 0.37% (14 of 3,764) in 2024-2025. Total residential electrical permits fell about 10% between those periods (from 2,091 a year to 1,882), so this is not a general fall in electrical work.

For the same window of each year (1 January to 29 September), solar homes went from 25 in 2022 to 6 in 2025 and 1 in 2026. Residential electrical permits in that window were 1,690, 1,334 and 1,384.

In 2020-2022, four residential solar installers held permits for 41 of the 85 homes. Across all permit types those four installers filed 83 permits in 2020-2022, one in 2023, and none after that.

Non-residential solar did not follow the same path. Commercial, industrial and institutional sites with a solar permit held steady at 5 to 7 a year from 2018 through 2026, with 5 so far in 2026. Two of the recent permits are large: 954.8 kW DC on W Polymer Dr (2025) and 171 kW on Siskin Dr (2026).

The count relies on the permit description naming the work, so an installation described only in generic terms would be missed. All but 3 residential electrical permits since 2020 carry a description. The file records permit applications, not completed or connected systems. It does not say why the number fell.