Permit values
Solar installation cost in Chicago
Declared value is what the contractor reported to the building department, which is what the permit fee is calculated from. It is usually the contract value excluding tax, and it runs below a retail quote. Treat it as the floor of the market, not the price. Why the permit and the quote disagree.
What the spread looks like
Every valued permit in the window, grouped by declared value. The last bar holds everything above the 95th percentile, so one unusually large job does not flatten the rest.
Month by month
| Month | Permits valued | Median |
|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 240 | $20,130 |
| September 2026 | 231 | $20,390 |
| October 2026 | 157 | $19,721 |
Complete calendar months only. The current month is left out until it ends.
Who pulled the most solar permits in Chicago
By permit count over the same window, out of the contractors the building departments name.
- 1SUNRUN INSTALLATION SERVICES INC383 (61.5%)
- 2CERTIFIED ELECTRIC LLC48 (7.7%)
- 3SUNRISE SOLAR LLC37 (5.9%)
- 4ECO ENERGY SERVICE LLC23 (3.7%)
- 5ION DEVELOPER LLC22 (3.5%)
- 6TRON SOLAR, LLC11 (1.8%)
- 7WINDFREE WIND + SOLAR ENERGY DESIGN COMPANY9 (1.4%)
- 8ISMAEL AYALA7 (1.1%)
- 9THE CORTESE ENERGY COMPANY LLC6 (1%)
- 10CERTASUN LLC5 (0.8%)
Method
Permit Dawn reads the building departments in City of Chicago permits with owner and contractor contacts and full work descriptions, plus City of Naperville permits with contractor phone and email. Cook County suburbs are coming. every night and keeps every residential permit they publish. This page counts the solar permits issued in August 2026, September 2026, October 2026 — 628 of them, 628 carrying a declared value (100%). Duplicates and permits a city later re-published are excluded, along with values below $500 and above $2,000,000, which are placeholders rather than jobs. Medians and quartiles, not averages: a handful of very large jobs would drag a mean somewhere no homeowner would recognise.