A new report reveals that median income families are installing the bulk of California’s solar and that the industry depends little on the wealthiest residents.

Two thirds of California’s solar installations in 2009, 2010 and 2011 were made in median income ZIP codes where homeowners made an average of $85,000 a year or less, according to data analysis from PV Solar Report and SunRun.

“This is very exciting data that we haven’t seen from the industry before,” said SunRun spokeswoman Susan Wise.

She said SunRun employees continuously heard criticism of the solar industry that it catered to the wealthy because only the richest homeowners could afford to go solar. But that wasn’t what employees saw in the field, Wise said. They saw average people installing solar on average budgets.

“It’s something we were seeing, and we were interested in knowing whether or not our observations were accurate,” she said.

SunRun focuses on making solar affordable by leasing the panels to homeowners so they pay a consistently low bill to SunRun each month instead of an electric bill, and they don’t have to shell out upfront money to pay for the panels to be installed.

PV Solar Report published a list of the top 10 solar cities in October that was consistent with SunRun’s theory that it wasn’t the wealthiest Californians who were deciding to install solar. Bakersfield and Fresno were among the state’s top five solar cities with average annual incomes of about $50,000 and $43,000. Meanwhile, extremely wealthy cities like Malibu, where the average income is $160,000, weren’t even in the top 25 cities, according to the report.

The percentage of total solar installations in California’s highest income ZIP codes is only 2 to 3 percent.

“We knew this,” Wise said. “Our customers report their incomes to us.”

It’s just nice to have some solid data to show that solar is for the masses, she said.

Image courtesy of SunRun.