Solar permit data · Chicago, Illinois
Every residential solar permit filed in Chicago, tracked the day it hits the public record. 19,086 permits on file, 78 filed in the last 30 days. Not a lead list. The verified record of who is going solar.
Volume, last 30 days vs prior 30: down 27 percent. Chicago refreshes daily, and every permit below carries its own filing date.
One market · four ways to sell
Every permit has a filing date, so the installs in Chicago split by age into four distinct sales motions. Same dataset, four reasons to knock.
Honeymoon window. Ask about the experience and referrals.
Service and recurring-contract candidates.
Prime retrofit window as battery prices fall.
Service-contract switch and monitoring takeover.
Loans cleared, hardware aging, ripe to replace.
What this is
When a homeowner installs solar, the contractor pulls a building or electrical permit with the local jurisdiction, and that filing becomes public record. Solar permit data is the structured, searchable version of those filings. Each record names the address, the filing date, the permit type, and the installing contractor. For Chicago, SolarLead tracks 19,086 of these, adding new ones the day they are filed.
A permit means a homeowner already chose solar and committed money, which is a far stronger signal than a shared lead-gen list. Installers use Chicago permit data to find fresh installs for referral and service offers, to spot battery-retrofit candidates as systems cross the 2 to 5 year mark, and to watch which contractors are gaining or losing ground across the area. It is a record of decisions, not a list of maybes.
Chicago permits refresh daily. The 78 figure above counts permits filed in the trailing 30 days, and 12 landed in the last week. Every record keeps its own filing date so freshness is never a guess.