Every claim on this page checked against primary sources on July 29, 2026

Installers

The regulator lookups

One row per state, linking to the body that issues the licence, with a column saying whether that link is a register we opened and searched or the regulator's own page. The date is when we last checked the link itself — not when we last read that state's licensing document, which is a separate date on the page that compares them, and not when the register was last updated, which is a third thing and is theirs to publish, not ours.

What a licence tells you, and what it does not

A licence is a floor, not a recommendation. It generally means the holder met an experience or examination requirement, carries whatever insurance or bond the state demands, and can be complained about to a body with the power to act. In some states it means more than that: Minnesota's residential building contractor licence is what gives a homeowner access to the state's Contractor Recovery Fund if the company fails mid-project.

What it does not tell you is whether the work will be good, whether the production estimate you were given is honest, or whether the financing is reasonable. Those are separate questions and no register answers them.

Where this section goes next

What is deliberately not here is a roster of companies. This site does not list, rank or recommend installers, and no company is named anywhere in this section. Rankings of contractors are what the marketplaces sell, they are paid placement dressed as judgment, and the moment we published one every licensing fact on this site would be read as advertising. The registers above are run by people with the authority to revoke a licence. We would rather point at them. How we verify explains the rest.

What this page does not cover yet

• Three states where we could not establish which licence covers photovoltaic work. They appear in the comparison as unresolved rather than being rounded to whatever their neighbours require. Secondary licensing claims have been wrong in every state on this site that had one, so we will not name a licence class without reading the regulator's own scope-of-practice document.
• One register we could not open ourselves. Where the regulator's own lookup sits behind a bot check, we do not work around it. Those rows link the board instead and are labelled as the regulator's page, so the table never claims we searched a register we never saw. The register is reachable from the page we link.
• Whether any register is complete or current. We link the lookup; we do not mirror it, cache it, or vouch for it. If a regulator's register is out of date, our link will faithfully show you an out-of-date register.
• Local licensing. In the states where the binding requirement is municipal rather than statewide, we have not collected the city and county requirements. That is a much larger job than twelve state regulators and we have not started it.
• Disciplinary history and complaints. Several of these regulators publish enforcement actions. We have not read any of them and do not surface them.
• Thirty-eight states. The table covers the 12 states with data files on this site. A state's absence means we have not read it, not that it has no requirement.