The growth and decline of residential solar PV adoption in Sweden

Today we will dwell into the rabbit hole of residential solar PV. Specifically, we will investigate the trends and buyers of residential solar PV systems in Sweden.

Let’s start by looking at some trends in installations and their size. Using data on subsidies paid out to households for installing PV systems, and the average size of these subsides we can get an understanding of the residential solar PV market development over the last years.

We start by showing how many subsidies to residential solar PV customers that where paid out by the Swedish government each month from start of 2021 to end of 2024. Looking at the data we see a clear increase in number of installations from 2021 to end of 2023, and then a sudden and sharp decline in 2024. The decline that appeared during the early part of 2024 stabilized initially, but showed downwards trend in the last months of 2024. Do you think this trend continue in 2025?

In Sweden, the size of the subsidy given to a household depends on the size of the PV system that the household installs. So by analyzing the average subsidy size we can get an understanding about the average size of solar PV system capacity (this is obviously simplified as prices in systems change amongst others). But, as you can see in the graph below, from 2021-2022 the size remained constant, but then increased rapidly during 2023. Without knowledge about the subsidy policies, it would be easy to attribute this to an increase in solar PV systems. But, the cause of the increase was actually due to an increase in the PV subsidy (from 15% to 20%). This increase was constant until the end of 2023. However, the constant decline occurring during 2024 is not associated with a constant change in subsidies, but actually a reduction in overall system cost, and likely system capacity.

Now, let’s take a step away from the size and growth of the residential PV market and instead look deeper into which households that made these installations. Specifically, we will look at three factors of previous buyers, their income, age and location.

By cross-referencing data from the Swedish Tax Agency and Statistics Sweden we can create a new dataset with more information that can give us further insights than the initial dataset contained. We can then use this new dataset to get more insights about the buyers.

Below we show the adoption rate (percentage of households that have a residential solar PV system installed) amongst Swedish households divided by income group. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this graph.

Solar PV adoption increase with income. This means that the more you earn, the more likely you are to have a solar PV system installed.
Households without at least one member with a salary of more than 200 000 SEK (20 000 €) per year invest in residential solar PV.
500 000 SEK (50 000 €) per year or more in income represents a breaking point, with household that are above this income level have a significantly higher tendency to purchase solar PV systems.

Breaking down this data geographically, we can see that there is a large variation between areas. In some areas of Sweden, up to 40% of single-family households in the >1MSEK per year income category has installed solar PV systems, while in others its below 10%. These variations depend on many factors, but we see a trend that high income, semi-rural (meaning no large cities but still located close to larger settlements) municipalities tend to have a higher share of solar PV installations.

So, now we know that it’s more common that households with a higher income are more likely to have solar PV systems installed, and that these are located outside of the largest cities. But how about age, does it also impact the probability to have a solar PV system?

By extracting the age of buyers, and cross reference this with data from Statistics Sweden can do a similar analysis as we did for income. The results show that its most common for buyers to be between 45-64 years old, and that it is rare that buyers the be below 35. This is likely due to a lack of the capital needed for the investment amongst younger adults. Interestingly, we also see that it’s relatively common for older (75+) people to install solar PV.

Based on the above presented analysis we can create our typical residential solar PV buyer in Sweden. This would be a person between 45-65 years old, with an income above 500 000 SEK per year, and living in a rural area closer to a larger city. There is obviously a lot more details, such as the cause for the differences shown here, that can be analyzed. But the presented analysis does give you an initial understanding about who, and where residential solar PV owners are located in Sweden. Similar results to the ones presented here have also been identified in the U.S by researchers from Stanford.

The presented analysis was conducted through merging datasets from the Swedish tax Authority and Statistics Sweden. Endre specialize in identifying and merging datasets to extract new, valuable information. If you want to learn more about our offerings in grid planning, and how we are working to provide data-driven insights, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Today we will dwell into the rabbit hole of residential solar PV. Specifically, we will investigate the trends and buyers of residential solar PV systems in Sweden.

Let’s start by looking at some trends in installations and their size. Using data on subsidies paid out to households for installing PV systems, and the average size of these subsides we can get an understanding of the residential solar PV market development over the last years.

We start by showing how many subsidies to residential solar PV customers that where paid out by the Swedish government each month from start of 2021 to end of 2024. Looking at the data we see a clear increase in number of installations from 2021 to end of 2023, and then a sudden and sharp decline in 2024. The decline that appeared during the early part of 2024 stabilized initially, but showed downwards trend in the last months of 2024. Do you think this trend continue in 2025?

In Sweden, the size of the subsidy given to a household depends on the size of the PV system that the household installs. So by analyzing the average subsidy size we can get an understanding about the average size of solar PV system capacity (this is obviously simplified as prices in systems change amongst others). But, as you can see in the graph below, from 2021-2022 the size remained constant, but then increased rapidly during 2023. Without knowledge about the subsidy policies, it would be easy to attribute this to an increase in solar PV systems. But, the cause of the increase was actually due to an increase in the PV subsidy (from 15% to 20%). This increase was constant until the end of 2023. However, the constant decline occurring during 2024 is not associated with a constant change in subsidies, but actually a reduction in overall system cost, and likely system capacity.

Now, let’s take a step away from the size and growth of the residential PV market and instead look deeper into which households that made these installations. Specifically, we will look at three factors of previous buyers, their income, age and location.

By cross-referencing data from the Swedish Tax Agency and Statistics Sweden we can create a new dataset with more information that can give us further insights than the initial dataset contained. We can then use this new dataset to get more insights about the buyers.

Below we show the adoption rate (percentage of households that have a residential solar PV system installed) amongst Swedish households divided by income group. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this graph.

Solar PV adoption increase with income. This means that the more you earn, the more likely you are to have a solar PV system installed.
Households without at least one member with a salary of more than 200 000 SEK (20 000 €) per year invest in residential solar PV.
500 000 SEK (50 000 €) per year or more in income represents a breaking point, with household that are above this income level have a significantly higher tendency to purchase solar PV systems.

Breaking down this data geographically, we can see that there is a large variation between areas. In some areas of Sweden, up to 40% of single-family households in the >1MSEK per year income category has installed solar PV systems, while in others its below 10%. These variations depend on many factors, but we see a trend that high income, semi-rural (meaning no large cities but still located close to larger settlements) municipalities tend to have a higher share of solar PV installations.

So, now we know that it’s more common that households with a higher income are more likely to have solar PV systems installed, and that these are located outside of the largest cities. But how about age, does it also impact the probability to have a solar PV system?

By extracting the age of buyers, and cross reference this with data from Statistics Sweden can do a similar analysis as we did for income. The results show that its most common for buyers to be between 45-64 years old, and that it is rare that buyers the be below 35. This is likely due to a lack of the capital needed for the investment amongst younger adults. Interestingly, we also see that it’s relatively common for older (75+) people to install solar PV.

Based on the above presented analysis we can create our typical residential solar PV buyer in Sweden. This would be a person between 45-65 years old, with an income above 500 000 SEK per year, and living in a rural area closer to a larger city. There is obviously a lot more details, such as the cause for the differences shown here, that can be analyzed. But the presented analysis does give you an initial understanding about who, and where residential solar PV owners are located in Sweden. Similar results to the ones presented here have also been identified in the U.S by researchers from Stanford.

The presented analysis was conducted through merging datasets from the Swedish tax Authority and Statistics Sweden. Endre specialize in identifying and merging datasets to extract new, valuable information. If you want to learn more about our offerings in grid planning, and how we are working to provide data-driven insights, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Today we will dwell into the rabbit hole of residential solar PV. Specifically, we will investigate the trends and buyers of residential solar PV systems in Sweden.

Let’s start by looking at some trends in installations and their size. Using data on subsidies paid out to households for installing PV systems, and the average size of these subsides we can get an understanding of the residential solar PV market development over the last years.

We start by showing how many subsidies to residential solar PV customers that where paid out by the Swedish government each month from start of 2021 to end of 2024. Looking at the data we see a clear increase in number of installations from 2021 to end of 2023, and then a sudden and sharp decline in 2024. The decline that appeared during the early part of 2024 stabilized initially, but showed downwards trend in the last months of 2024. Do you think this trend continue in 2025?

In Sweden, the size of the subsidy given to a household depends on the size of the PV system that the household installs. So by analyzing the average subsidy size we can get an understanding about the average size of solar PV system capacity (this is obviously simplified as prices in systems change amongst others). But, as you can see in the graph below, from 2021-2022 the size remained constant, but then increased rapidly during 2023. Without knowledge about the subsidy policies, it would be easy to attribute this to an increase in solar PV systems. But, the cause of the increase was actually due to an increase in the PV subsidy (from 15% to 20%). This increase was constant until the end of 2023. However, the constant decline occurring during 2024 is not associated with a constant change in subsidies, but actually a reduction in overall system cost, and likely system capacity.

Now, let’s take a step away from the size and growth of the residential PV market and instead look deeper into which households that made these installations. Specifically, we will look at three factors of previous buyers, their income, age and location.

By cross-referencing data from the Swedish Tax Agency and Statistics Sweden we can create a new dataset with more information that can give us further insights than the initial dataset contained. We can then use this new dataset to get more insights about the buyers.

Below we show the adoption rate (percentage of households that have a residential solar PV system installed) amongst Swedish households divided by income group. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this graph.

Solar PV adoption increase with income. This means that the more you earn, the more likely you are to have a solar PV system installed.
Households without at least one member with a salary of more than 200 000 SEK (20 000 €) per year invest in residential solar PV.
500 000 SEK (50 000 €) per year or more in income represents a breaking point, with household that are above this income level have a significantly higher tendency to purchase solar PV systems.

Breaking down this data geographically, we can see that there is a large variation between areas. In some areas of Sweden, up to 40% of single-family households in the >1MSEK per year income category has installed solar PV systems, while in others its below 10%. These variations depend on many factors, but we see a trend that high income, semi-rural (meaning no large cities but still located close to larger settlements) municipalities tend to have a higher share of solar PV installations.

So, now we know that it’s more common that households with a higher income are more likely to have solar PV systems installed, and that these are located outside of the largest cities. But how about age, does it also impact the probability to have a solar PV system?

By extracting the age of buyers, and cross reference this with data from Statistics Sweden can do a similar analysis as we did for income. The results show that its most common for buyers to be between 45-64 years old, and that it is rare that buyers the be below 35. This is likely due to a lack of the capital needed for the investment amongst younger adults. Interestingly, we also see that it’s relatively common for older (75+) people to install solar PV.

Based on the above presented analysis we can create our typical residential solar PV buyer in Sweden. This would be a person between 45-65 years old, with an income above 500 000 SEK per year, and living in a rural area closer to a larger city. There is obviously a lot more details, such as the cause for the differences shown here, that can be analyzed. But the presented analysis does give you an initial understanding about who, and where residential solar PV owners are located in Sweden. Similar results to the ones presented here have also been identified in the U.S by researchers from Stanford.

The presented analysis was conducted through merging datasets from the Swedish tax Authority and Statistics Sweden. Endre specialize in identifying and merging datasets to extract new, valuable information. If you want to learn more about our offerings in grid planning, and how we are working to provide data-driven insights, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Today we will dwell into the rabbit hole of residential solar PV. Specifically, we will investigate the trends and buyers of residential solar PV systems in Sweden.

Let’s start by looking at some trends in installations and their size. Using data on subsidies paid out to households for installing PV systems, and the average size of these subsides we can get an understanding of the residential solar PV market development over the last years.

We start by showing how many subsidies to residential solar PV customers that where paid out by the Swedish government each month from start of 2021 to end of 2024. Looking at the data we see a clear increase in number of installations from 2021 to end of 2023, and then a sudden and sharp decline in 2024. The decline that appeared during the early part of 2024 stabilized initially, but showed downwards trend in the last months of 2024. Do you think this trend continue in 2025?

In Sweden, the size of the subsidy given to a household depends on the size of the PV system that the household installs. So by analyzing the average subsidy size we can get an understanding about the average size of solar PV system capacity (this is obviously simplified as prices in systems change amongst others). But, as you can see in the graph below, from 2021-2022 the size remained constant, but then increased rapidly during 2023. Without knowledge about the subsidy policies, it would be easy to attribute this to an increase in solar PV systems. But, the cause of the increase was actually due to an increase in the PV subsidy (from 15% to 20%). This increase was constant until the end of 2023. However, the constant decline occurring during 2024 is not associated with a constant change in subsidies, but actually a reduction in overall system cost, and likely system capacity.

Now, let’s take a step away from the size and growth of the residential PV market and instead look deeper into which households that made these installations. Specifically, we will look at three factors of previous buyers, their income, age and location.

By cross-referencing data from the Swedish Tax Agency and Statistics Sweden we can create a new dataset with more information that can give us further insights than the initial dataset contained. We can then use this new dataset to get more insights about the buyers.

Below we show the adoption rate (percentage of households that have a residential solar PV system installed) amongst Swedish households divided by income group. Three main conclusions can be drawn from this graph.

Solar PV adoption increase with income. This means that the more you earn, the more likely you are to have a solar PV system installed.
Households without at least one member with a salary of more than 200 000 SEK (20 000 €) per year invest in residential solar PV.
500 000 SEK (50 000 €) per year or more in income represents a breaking point, with household that are above this income level have a significantly higher tendency to purchase solar PV systems.

Breaking down this data geographically, we can see that there is a large variation between areas. In some areas of Sweden, up to 40% of single-family households in the >1MSEK per year income category has installed solar PV systems, while in others its below 10%. These variations depend on many factors, but we see a trend that high income, semi-rural (meaning no large cities but still located close to larger settlements) municipalities tend to have a higher share of solar PV installations.

So, now we know that it’s more common that households with a higher income are more likely to have solar PV systems installed, and that these are located outside of the largest cities. But how about age, does it also impact the probability to have a solar PV system?

By extracting the age of buyers, and cross reference this with data from Statistics Sweden can do a similar analysis as we did for income. The results show that its most common for buyers to be between 45-64 years old, and that it is rare that buyers the be below 35. This is likely due to a lack of the capital needed for the investment amongst younger adults. Interestingly, we also see that it’s relatively common for older (75+) people to install solar PV.

Based on the above presented analysis we can create our typical residential solar PV buyer in Sweden. This would be a person between 45-65 years old, with an income above 500 000 SEK per year, and living in a rural area closer to a larger city. There is obviously a lot more details, such as the cause for the differences shown here, that can be analyzed. But the presented analysis does give you an initial understanding about who, and where residential solar PV owners are located in Sweden. Similar results to the ones presented here have also been identified in the U.S by researchers from Stanford.

The presented analysis was conducted through merging datasets from the Swedish tax Authority and Statistics Sweden. Endre specialize in identifying and merging datasets to extract new, valuable information. If you want to learn more about our offerings in grid planning, and how we are working to provide data-driven insights, don’t hesitate to reach out!