The Best and Worst States for Rooftop Solar Panels

If you’re going to install solar panels on your roof, you’ll want to know what it will cost and how much money you can save. The answers to those questions depend on two more complicated criteria: How difficult is it to connect to the energy grid, and how will you be compensated for the electricity your panels produce? Luckily for the solar pioneer, a newly updated report grades each state on its answers to these questions.

The “Freeing the Grid” scorecard, released Monday by the nonprofit Interstate Renewable Energy Council, serves as a handy tracker for the growth of policies that promote “net metering” (which compensates homegrown energy producers for the surplus electricity they pump back into the grid) and “interconnection” (which is the technical term for the logistics involved in actually hooking up a renewable energy project to the grid). The trend is decidedly positive. The number of states with A grades for net metering has more than tripled since tracking began in 2007. That year, no states got A’s for interconnection; now 10 do, though 16 received F’s.