Solar output by state: all 50 states and DC ranked

By Emily CarterPublished October 27, 2026Data as of 2026-10-27: PVWatts® v8, typical-year weather

New Mexico tops the state list at 1,779 kWh per kW a year, followed by Arizona (1,759) and Nevada (1,743). Alaska (951), Washington (1,088) and Oregon (1,121) are at the bottom. Each state figure is the average of its listed cities, and 33 states have just one listed city.

All 50 states and DC

The table ranks every state by the average yearly output of its listed cities, in kWh per kW of panels facing south at 20°. Where a state has three or more cities, its name links to a state page; otherwise it links to the single city. Sixteen states have an average at or above the national median city (1,450).

How to read a state figure

The city list was built from population: the largest place in every state and DC, then the next-largest places nationally, up to 100. That gives 33 states exactly one city, so for most states the “state average” is really one city's figure. Wyoming is Cheyenne, Montana is Billings and Washington is Seattle. A single city cannot show how much a state varies away from it.

Treat the ranking as a list of the main city in each state. Large states with several cities give a better sense of their own spread, shown below.

Spread inside the larger states

Eight states have three or more listed cities. The table gives the lowest and highest city in each.

California, with 15 cities, has the widest range: from 1,548 in San Francisco to 1,728 in Chula Vista, a gap of 180 kWh per kW. That is wider than the gap between many neighbouring states, which is one more reason to look at the city rather than the state.

Texas is the other wide case. Its nine cities run from 1,421 in Houston to 1,835 in El Paso, the sunniest city in the country. Florida is the opposite: its four cities sit within 114 kWh of each other, from Jacksonville to Tampa. Florida's state average of 1,522 describes its cities well; Texas's 1,544 is a much rougher guide to any one city there.

A few placings worth a second look

Some positions in the table run against the usual picture of a sunny south and a cloudy north. Hawaii (Honolulu) is not first but 6th, behind New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California and Colorado. Kansas (9th) places above Florida (10th), and Wyoming (7th) above both. Georgia (20th) and North Carolina (24th) sit in the middle of the list, close to South Dakota (21st).

The reasons are in the city pages rather than the state averages. Honolulu's year is unusually flat, so its total depends on a steady, mid-level output every month instead of a strong summer peak. The plains cities make up in strong summer months what they lose in winter, and their monthly tables show it. The seasonal guide compares those shapes directly.

How far states sit from the median

Most states are close to the national median city. Seventeen of the 51 have an average within 5% of 1,450, between 1,377 and 1,522 kWh per kW. Five sit more than 10% above it (New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California and Colorado), and fourteen sit more than 10% below, from North Dakota down to Alaska.

Put in whole-system terms, the difference between the top and bottom state is large. A 6 kW array makes about 10,670 kWh a year in New Mexico's listed city and 5,700 in Alaska's. Between the median state, Alabama (1,387), and the top, the gap is 28%.

By Census region

Averaged across their listed cities, the four Census regions rank West 1,606, South 1,453, Midwest 1,358 and Northeast 1,280 kWh per kW a year. The West owes its lead to the desert states and Southern California; Seattle, Portland and Anchorage, also in the West, are three of the four lowest cities in the country. The region pages show each region's cities on a map, and the seasonal guide shows how their years differ month by month.

The South is mixed as well. Its 34 listed cities run from 1,219 in Charleston, WV to 1,835 in El Paso, TX, so its average sits close to the national median while its two ends sit near the bottom and the very top of the national list. The Northeast is the most uniform: its twelve cities lie between 1,191 and 1,353.

For a city-level view of the same ranking, see the sunniest and least sunny cities.

Sources

• PVWatts® Calculator API v8, National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR, formerly NREL): developer.nlr.gov. 600 model runs (100 cities × 6 layouts), retrieved 2026-10-27.
• Weather: NSRDB typical-meteorological-year data returned by PVWatts® (NSRDB PSM V3 GOES tmy-2020 3.2.0, NSRDB PSM V4 Polar tmy-2023 1.0.0).
• City list and locations: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 Population Estimates for incorporated places (SUB-EST2024) and U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 Gazetteer Files - Places (census.gov).
• Every figure in this guide is computed by SunYieldMap from those model runs. Settings and limits are in the methodology.