On January 1, 2026, the 25D federal residential solar tax credit expired, and your installer client lost the easiest selling season they had ever known. SEIA and Wood Mackenzie now forecast a 19% residential contraction this year. The pie is smaller, the competition for it is sharper, and the homeowner doing the research is no longer opening Google first.
Per the 6sense 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 94% of buyers now use large language models during the research phase, and 95% pick from their Day-1 shortlist. Translated to a solar installer: whoever gets cited inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews when a homeowner asks "best solar installer near me" owns the install slot four months later. The agency that delivers that citation share owns the retainer.
What follows is the local-first playbook we run on solar accounts, structured as four phases over 90 days. It is written for the agency owner running the engagement, with notes for the installer reading directly. It assumes one solar client, a $5K-$15K monthly retainer to defend, and the kind of defensible KPIs your next QBR will actually accept.
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Start free trialSolar is the hardest, most lucrative local AEO category right now
The US installed 43.2 GWdc of solar in 2025, the fifth straight year solar led new electricity capacity. But residential dropped 2% to 4,647 MWdc, and the segment is forecast to contract another 19% next (SEIA Q4 2025). The pre-cliff rush was very real — EnergySage logged a 205% surge in H2 2025 engagement. Now the surge is over and your client is selling into a contracting market against the top-5 installers, who hold ~35% of residential share with Sunrun alone at ~19%.
The traditional Google playbook will not close that gap. Ahrefs' December 2025 data shows AI Overviews now cut top-position organic CTR by 58%, and Seer Interactive measured a 61% organic CTR drop on AIO-triggered queries. The flip side is the bigger story: per Seer, pages cited inside an AI Overview get 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than uncited pages. And AI Overviews now trigger on 92% of "near me" informational queries. For a hyper-local, $15K-$30K, multi-incentive purchase like solar, that is the entire upper funnel.
The 25D cliff hides a citation moat
Per EnergySage's ITC explainer and the IRS Residential Clean Energy Credit page, the 25D credit for customer-owned residential systems expired Dec 31, 2025. The 48E commercial ITC remains for third-party-owned (lease/PPA) systems through 2027, and the broader Federal Solar ITC framework remains at 30% for commercial projects through 2032 under existing IRA provisions (Energy.gov via EnergySage).
Here is the agency leverage point most installers miss. Every AI answer written in November 2025 about the federal solar tax credit is now wrong. The installer who keeps their state-incentive page, FAQ and Reddit comment trail accurate weekly on 25D vs 48E becomes the freshest correct source in the entire category, and AI engines reward freshness on regulatory queries more than almost any other vertical. Your competitor's stale content is your moat.
How AI engines actually rank solar installers
Solar AEO is a five-engine fight. The buyer who asks ChatGPT "is Sunrun reputable" is a different prospect from the one who asks Perplexity "best solar installer in Phoenix" or pulls up a YouTube comparison surfaced inside Google AI Overviews. Each engine pulls from a different source mix.
- ChatGPT (weight 0.35) — largest user base. Per First Page Sage, ChatGPT holds ~64% of generative-AI traffic. Rewards domain authority and brand mentions across trusted third-party sources. Win it with SEIA, EnergySage, SolarReviews, NABCEP and DSIRE state-page mentions.
- Perplexity (weight 0.25) — Reddit dominates. Per CMSWire citing Discovered Labs data, 46.7% of Perplexity's top citations came from Reddit at peak, and Soar Agency confirms the pattern. r/solar (250K+ members) is the dominant subreddit. Win it with NABCEP-credentialed employees participating as disclosed experts.
- Gemini + Google AIO (weight 0.25) — YouTube-heavy. Per Search Engine Land, YouTube has a 200x citation advantage over the next video platform, and accounts for ~29.5% of AIO citations. Win it with 6+ videos in 90 days, transcripts mandatory.
- Claude (weight 0.15) — smaller traffic footprint, heavier on authoritative documents. Per Discovered Labs, Claude leans on Wikipedia, government data and high-authority trade publications. Win it with brand-mention-rich pillar content cited by SEIA, NREL and trade press.
Pulling back: per Semrush's 3-month most-cited-domains study, Reddit was the #1 cited source across LLMs at 40.1%, ahead of Wikipedia (26.3%) and YouTube (23.5%). For solar specifically, r/solar threads are doing the recommendation work AI engines repeat.
Watch for —
Single-engine reporting is a trap on solar accounts. Your client can be cited #1 by Claude on "best solar installer in [city]" and entirely invisible on Perplexity, because Perplexity is reading r/solar while Claude is reading SEIA. Always report per-engine. Never blended.
The trusted-source stack AI engines pull from
The earned-mention target list is fixed. Hit all of them inside the first 60 days.
- SEIA member directory — seia.org/directory. Trade-body authority. High citation weight for ChatGPT and Claude.
- EnergySage installer profile — energysage.com/supplier/search. The pricing data on this page is what AI engines cite for "how much do solar panels cost in [state]."
- SolarReviews installer profile — 10,000+ consumer reviews of 3,000+ installers. The Top 100 list is one of the most frequently cited "best of" pages in solar AI answers.
- NABCEP Professional Directory — directories.nabcep.org. The certification AI engines treat as a quality gate.
- DSIRE state-incentive listings — dsireusa.org. Canonical state-incentive database cross-referenced on every "[state] solar rebates" query.
- Trade press — Solar Power World, Solar Builder, PV Magazine USA. One published byline in 30 days is the realistic target.
- Solar podcast circuit — Sun-Up Podcast, Solar Power World podcast, The Energy Show, Suncast. Three appearances in 30 days. Transcripts get indexed.
- r/solar — the Perplexity moat — 250K+ members. Per Semrush's 248K-post study, Q&A threads are ~75% of cited Reddit content.
- Consumer listicles — NerdWallet, ConsumerAffairs, Forbes Home. These are what AI engines crawl for "best X in Y" answers.
The 90-day local-first playbook, in four phases
The structure below is what we run on solar accounts. It assumes one full-time agency strategist plus an installer contact who can record a podcast, post on Reddit under their own name, and approve content within 48 hours.
Phase 1
Days 1-14 — Audit and foundational profiles
The audit grid is fixed: 10 representative queries x 5 engines x 3 runs across 7 days = 150 baseline data points. Split the queries 4 trust/shortlist, 3 cost/decision, 2 incentive, 1 mid-funnel. Three runs across a week because AI answers fluctuate run-to-run, and one snapshot is not something a QBR can defend.
- ▸ Run the 10 x 5 x 3 baseline grid. Record per-engine ACS, mention rate and position score on every query.
- ▸ Claim or update SEIA, EnergySage installer profile, SolarReviews, NABCEP and Google Business Profile.
- ▸ Build a single "Incentives in [state]" page on the client site, pulled from the DSIRE database, and make it the canonical state-incentive citation magnet.
- ▸ Lock the inline citation discipline: every claim about 25D, 48E or state-incentive amounts cites the source in the same sentence.
Phase 2
Days 15-30 — Earned mentions sprint
This is the highest-ROI phase of the entire engagement. Four earned-mention plays run in parallel because the cycle time of each is different (Reddit is days, podcasts are weeks, trade press is six to eight weeks).
- ▸ r/solar contributing-expert play. Identify 1-2 NABCEP-credentialed employees. Have them participate as named experts with disclosed affiliation, no promotion, substantive answers to the 20 highest-volume Q&A threads of the last 90 days. Per Semrush's 248,000-post study, more than 80% of cited Reddit content has fewer than 20 upvotes. You are not chasing viral. You are chasing presence.
- ▸ Solar podcast circuit. Sun-Up, Solar Power World, The Energy Show, Suncast. Three appearances in 30 days. Audio transcripts get indexed and surface in Gemini and AIO citation paths.
- ▸ Trade-publication guest article. Pitch Solar Power World, Solar Builder, PV Magazine USA, Solar Industry Magazine. One published byline in 30 days.
- ▸ Local utility approved-installer application. PG&E, ConEd, Duke Energy, equivalents in your client's service area. Approval can take 30-90 days, so kick off in this phase even though the citation payoff lands in Phase 4.
Phase 3
Days 31-60 — Content structured for AI parsing
By the end of Phase 3 the client site should be readable by an AI engine in three passes: a short chunk per question, structured data on every page, and a state/city footprint that gives a local query a local answer.
- ▸ 100-150 word chunked pillar pages. Every section answers one question in a self-contained block that can be lifted verbatim. Example: "The 25D federal residential solar tax credit expired Dec 31, 2025 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Homeowners using a lease or PPA system can still benefit from the 48E commercial ITC through 2027. Commercial projects remain eligible for the 30% Federal Solar ITC through 2032."
- ▸ Attribute-rich Product and FAQ schema. Per Search Engine Land's structured-data guide for local AI visibility, attribute-rich schema (pricing ranges, warranty, equipment brands, service areas, aggregateRating) is load-bearing. Generic JSON-LD is worse than no schema. Specificity is what gets cited.
- ▸ State and city pages with unique local content. Each gets local utility name, DSIRE incentives, representative panel-count for a typical home, install timeline, three embedded local reviews. Stack FAQ schema on every state and city page targeting "how much do solar panels cost in [state]" — the national average is $2.58/W before incentives, $30,505 for a 12 kW system per EnergySage, with state spread from $2.09/W in Arizona to $3.18/W in New Hampshire.
- ▸ Internal Q&A page that mirrors the audit-grid queries. Each query gets a 150-word answer with cited sources. This is the page Perplexity will actually quote from.
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Start free trialPhase 4
Days 61-90 — Authority compounding
Slow-build work that lands its citation payoff after Day 90 and keeps paying for the rest of the retainer. Phase 4 is also the phase that converts a one-off engagement into a 12-month retainer because the metrics start moving on tracked queries the client already cares about.
- ▸ Top-10 "best solar installer in [city]" listicles. Pitch local lifestyle publications, regional business journals, ConsumerAffairs, NerdWallet, This Old House. These listicles are what AI engines crawl for "best X in Y" queries.
- ▸ YouTube push. Six videos in 30 days. Mix: 2 customer testimonials, 2 educational, 1 incentive explainer (25D vs 48E), 1 installation timelapse. Transcripts mandatory because the transcript is the citation surface, not the video.
- ▸ GBP review velocity. 3-5 new reviews per week per location. Per BrightLocal 2026, 41% of consumers "always" read reviews when browsing local businesses (up from 29% the year prior), and review text — not just star rating — feeds AI relevance.
- ▸ Quote NREL and SETO data on pillar pages. Being adjacent to authoritative citations builds entity association. Quote NREL's PV installation best practices guide on technical pages.
Watch for —
Do not promise the client they will outrank Sunrun on "best solar installer near me" nationally. They will not. Promise top-3 mention share in their service area on five specific buyer-intent queries by Day 90: "best solar installer in [city]," "[state] solar rebates," "is [client name] reputable," "how much do solar panels cost in [state]," and "solar lease vs buy." That is defensible. That is what closes installs.
KPIs to report to the solar installer client
Solar clients are operations-heavy. They want defensible numbers, not vague "AI visibility is up" platitudes. The reporting cadence below is the one we put in front of installer ops directors and have it survive a 30-minute QBR challenge.
- ACS by engine — a +30-80% lift on tracked queries over 90 days. Reported weekly.
- Mention rate per engine — from baseline to 40%+ on top 3 queries. Weekly.
- Top gap queries — move 3 from "never cited" to "occasionally cited." Bi-weekly.
- Top win queries — grow from 5 to 12 (cited on 2+ engines). Bi-weekly.
- Reddit r/solar branded mentions — from 0 to 8-15 disclosed-expert contributions. Weekly.
- YouTube citations in Gemini and AIO — from 0 to 3+ tracked appearances. Monthly.
- GBP review velocity — +50% vs baseline. Weekly.
Keep AI referral traffic out of the headline. Per Conductor's AEO/GEO benchmarks, AI referral traffic is still ~1% of sessions for most categories. If you headline that number the client misreads the program as small. Headline the mention metrics. Mentions are upstream of every install lead.
Multi-location vs single-location solar brands
Single-market installers (one metro, 1-3 crews) put 70% of effort on r/solar, GBP, SolarReviews and the local utility approved-installer listing. They win on hyper-local Perplexity and Google AIO queries because precision beats scale at that level.
Multi-state installers (Trinity, Freedom Forever, Solar Energy World, Momentum) need a hybrid model: per-state pages, per-state DSIRE incentive blocks, per-state GBP per location, corporate-level SEIA, Wikipedia and trade-press authority. Corporate owns brand pillar plus Wikipedia adjacency. Local franchise/branch owns GBP and reviews. Tesla Energy is the outlier — Powerwall 3 doubled its residential inverter share in 2025, and Tesla's Wikipedia plus YouTube authority does the work most installers cannot afford.
The honest take from running solar accounts
Solar is the hardest local-services AEO category I have worked. The 25D cliff creates a moving citation target, and the answer ChatGPT gave in November 2025 is wrong now. That is the biggest leverage point you have: the installer who keeps content updated weekly on 25D vs 48E becomes the de-facto cited authority because every competitor's content is stale. Your job is to be the freshest correct source in the category.
Build the audit grid in Days 1-14. Stack earned mentions in Days 15-30. Structure the site for AI parsing in Days 31-60. Compound authority in Days 61-90. Report mentions, not traffic. Promise top-3 in the service area on five buyer-intent queries. Defend the retainer with the per-engine ACS scorecard, not with vague visibility narratives.