US Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Database Files

Latest Database Release: USPVDB_V3_0_20250430

The latest release includes data on 5,712 facilities covering 49 states (plus the District of Columbia), including ground mounted, rooftop, canopy, and floating systems with capacities of 1 MW or more. The most recent facilities added to the USPVDB became operational as recently as the third quarter of 2024. The oldest facilities in the data set were installed prior to 1990. USPVDB releases generally lag installations by more than a year, due to the release times of underlying data, including satellite imagery, and the effort required to digitize facilities.

Click here to go to the U.S. Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Database website and online viewer, where the USPVDB data can be downloaded.

This site holds the codebooks, memos and other information about the most recent USPVDB data release.  Please email uspvdb@lbl.gov for information. To be added to the USPVDB mailing list to receive information about upcoming releases etc, please go here.

A paper providing detailed descriptions of the methodology used to assemble this dataset can be found here: Fujita, K.S., Ancona, Z..H., Kramer, L.A., Diffendorfer, J.E., Straka, M., Gautreau, T.E., Robson, D., Hoen, B. and Garrity, C.P., Georectified polygon database of ground-mounted large-scale solar photovoltaic sites in the United States. Scientific Data (2023) (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02644-8)

A brief overview of this study can be found here. 

A webinar describing the data sources and the data viewer was recorded on Nov 16, 2023, and can be viewed here.