Playbook · Solar installers
The solar installer playbook
A solar permit in the record is a system someone else already sold. The signals that actually feed a solar book are the ones next to it: a reroof on a house that already has panels (detach-and-reset work nobody else is bidding), a pool going in (a load increase and a payback story that sells itself), a new home about to be built, a service upgrade. This is the guide to reading those.
Set up in a few minutes; your first digest lands the next morning at 7 AM.
The daily loop
- 1
Start with reroofs, not solar
Set your ZIPs and make your first saved search the roofing lens. Every reroof on a home with existing panels is a detach-and-reset job — the panels have to come off and go back on, and the roofer usually isn’t licensed to do it. That work is time-boxed to the roofing schedule, which means whoever calls first gets it.
TipThe roofing lens deliberately excludes roof-mounted solar, so it shows you roofing work — exactly the jobs where someone else’s panels are in the way.
- 2
Add pools and service upgrades
A pool permit is one of the biggest residential load increases in Arizona — and a homeowner who just spent on a pool has both the bill and the appetite for solar. Electrical service upgrades are the same signal one step earlier. Save each as its own search so the calls stay sorted.
- 3
Work the builders for new construction
The contractor leaderboards rank the most active production builders in your ZIPs. Solar-ready and solar-included packages are decided at the builder level, not the house level — one relationship is a section of roofs.
- 4
Use the solar lens as your market map
Now turn the solar lens on and read it weekly: who is winning installs in your ZIPs, at what pace, and where. It’s the competitive picture — and when a rival’s pace drops, their referral partners start taking calls.
Aim it right
Point your search at the work that precedes a solar sale
Match the search to the kind of solar work you’re building.
Searches you can paste straight in
Type it in plain English — the search bar parses the trade, the ZIPs, the dollar floor, and the date window for you.
“reroofs over $15k in my zips in the last 30 days”
Roofing work in progress — the subset with existing panels is detach-and-reset work on a deadline.
“pool permits over $50k in my zips”
Homeowners adding the single biggest load an Arizona house takes on — and a payback conversation that writes itself.
“the busiest solar contractors this year”
Your competitive map: who’s winning volume in your ZIPs.
What to look for
The signals that separate a call from a waste of a call
- Reroof + existing panels
- The panels must come off and go back on. It’s scheduled work with a hard date, and the roofer generally can’t do it — the most reliable solar-adjacent job in the permit record.
- Pool valuation
- A large pool build signals both a load increase and a household spending on the home. Sort by value to find the ones worth the call.
- Builder velocity
- Solar-included packages are a builder decision. A builder whose permit count is climbing is deciding for more roofs this quarter.
- Lifecycle stage
- “Applied” is the earliest legal moment to reach a builder or a homeowner mid-project.
Power moves
Once you’re past the basics
Most installers ignore it. It’s smaller-ticket, scheduled, and it puts you on the roof of a home that already believes in solar — the best upsell audience there is.
Reroofs + pools feed today’s calls; new construction feeds the builder relationships that carry next year.
It’s a market map, not a lead list. Weekly is enough to see who’s rising and who’s slipping.
My Book on your three biggest competitors tells you the week one of them slows down.
What you’ll see on every lead
Type, work class, lifecycle stage, and declared value — or a clearly-labeled estimate when the city doesn’t report one.
Where named: AZ ROC license, status, classification, disciplinary flags, recent volume — on a match-confidence badge.
Parcel-matched address and owner of record; with Pro, owner mailing address for direct mail.
Refreshed daily from each city’s feed.
Straight about the data
What we won’t oversell
- The honest limit: permits do not tell you which reroofed homes have existing panels — you’ll qualify that on the call or from the street. What they give you is the short, dated list of roofs being worked on this week in your ZIPs.
- Solar valuations are among the noisiest in the data — treat any ~EST figure as a rough band, not a quote.
- Some cities publish permits without a contractor field — Gilbert, Goodyear, Chandler, and Queen Creek name no contractor — so competitor tracking is thinner there.
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