Our analysis of City of Richmond permit records found that new residential solar systems permitted from July 2025 through June 2026 averaged approximately 8.2 kW. Your own system may be larger or smaller depending primarily on annual electricity consumption, usable roof area, orientation, shading, and whether you plan to add loads such as an EV or heat pump.rnrnAcross Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover, we identified 1,243 qualifying new residential solar installations from July 2025 through June 2026.* Systems with usable capacity data averaged approximately 9.3 kW regionally, with average system sizes generally increasing outside the urban core.

When a permit provided an explicit system capacity, that capacity was used directly or recovered from the permit record. When total capacity was unavailable but panel count was available, a jurisdiction-specific panel-watt assumption was used where the underlying permit evidence supported that approach. Records without enough information to determine or reasonably estimate capacity remained in the installation count but were excluded from calculations requiring system size.

This is why the analysis reports capacity coverage alongside system-size results. Coverage differs by jurisdiction: approximately 86% in Richmond, 78% in Henrico, 72% in Chesterfield, and 57% in Hanover. The regional 9.3 kW analytical average therefore describes the 924 systems with usable capacity evidence, not a measured average of all 1,243 qualifying installations.

Public permitting systems were created to administer building and electrical work, not to serve as market-research databases. Reporting practices differ by jurisdiction, and fields such as system capacity, panel count, contractor, and project value are not consistently available for every permit. The figures on this page are therefore Dominion Energy Solutions’ permit-derived analysis of the public records, not official statistics published by the four jurisdictions or by Dominion Energy Virginia.

The jurisdiction benchmarks are useful for understanding what is being permitted locally, but they should not be used to size an individual home. A homeowner’s system should be designed around annual electricity use, available roof or ground area, orientation, shading, equipment selection, and anticipated future loads.