Off-Grid by State

What each state actually regulates on rural land, the sun you get in December rather than on average, and what a build costs installed. One page per state — 52.

Alabama

Timberland just over $2,200 an acre, a December that hardly dents the array, and rural counties enforcing no building permit — on a code clock set for 2027.

Alaska

More unincorporated land with no building code than any other state, and a domestic water allowance an ordinary household never files for.

Arizona

Sun steady enough that a December array is barely bigger than a June one. The well, not the panels, is where an Arizona build gets hard.

Arkansas

Cheap ground, but the residential code belongs to the state rather than the county. Plan for ice first and tornadoes second.

California

No county opts out of the state code — and in exchange you get the widest December sun spread in the country and a grid that switches itself off.

Colorado

Some of the best year-round sun outside the desert, in counties that skip building permits entirely, wrapped in the most tangled water law in the West.

Connecticut

County government ended in 1960; all 169 towns run the state code. The argument here is the fourth-highest power bill in America, not distance.

Delaware

Three counties, three building departments, no unzoned corner to build through. The driver is storm resilience rather than escape.

Florida

One code covers all 67 counties by statute, pasture runs near four times the national price, and wind-rated hardware is in every quote.

Georgia

The state sets what a code must say, then leaves enforcement to the county. Helene changed how much of rural Georgia thinks about the wires.

Hawaii

Residential power at 52 cents a kilowatt-hour, and four county governments that regulate a hillside cabin the way a city regulates a subdivision.

Idaho

Light rural rules, pasture around $2,400 an acre, and a Panhandle that sits under Pacific cloud for a good part of winter while the south stays clear.

Illinois

Rules went statewide on 1 January 2025, farmland runs more than twice the national average, and one plumbing regulation gates every dwelling regardless of local code.

Indiana

A named handful of counties have never adopted zoning or a building code — and the 2022 cut to solar buyback rates rewards keeping your own power.

Iowa

The most valuable farm ground in the country, a county permit for every well and septic system, and a single derecho that made the resilience case.

Kansas

A steeply tilted array outside Dodge City still collects about 4.5 peak sun hours in midwinter. The statewide well standard decides your site plan before you dig.

Kentucky

The farmstead exemption does the real work: no permit and no inspection for a house unless your local government has actually stood up a program.

Louisiana

The rulebook is written at the capitol, not the parish courthouse, and no parish is allowed to sit it out. Sun barely varies across the map or the year.

Maine

The Nearings landed here and the culture never left. Towns vary; the unorganized territory answers to the Land Use Planning Commission instead.

Maryland

Every jurisdiction has to enforce the code, inspect the work and sign a use-and-occupancy certificate. One genuine off-grid exemption survives in statute.

Massachusetts

Every acre sits in one of 351 towns, each required by statute to employ a building inspector. Going off-grid here is entirely legal and impossible to do quietly.

Michigan

The residential code is a state rule written in Lansing and it lands on every parcel. Your water plan and your power plan get approved by two different offices.

Minnesota

The line is population, not county: cities under 2,500 that hadn’t adopted the code by 2008 are never forced to enforce it.

Mississippi

No mandatory statewide building code outside six Gulf Coast counties, and no state water-use permit for a domestic well. Storms arrive from both directions.

Missouri

No statewide permit requirement for a house, an exemption if you drill your own well, and a state law that protects the right to disconnect.

Montana

Farm real estate at $1,230 an acre and a state building code that leaves houses alone — against a December that dictates the entire design.

Nebraska

The one state where every customer buys from a public utility, so cheap grid power talks borderline projects out of existing. Zoning is optional; the Sandhills passed.

Nevada

The easiest solar design in the lower 48 and the hardest water question. Federal ownership, not price, is what limits what you can buy.

New Hampshire

Towns are authorised to enforce the state code, never required to. Where a town never set up an office, there is no local permit to pull at all.

New Jersey

The priciest farm land in the country outside Rhode Island, no municipality without a code office, and 2.7 million customers dark after Sandy.

New Mexico

The cheapest ground covered in this series, under a single minimum code that applies everywhere in the state — incorporated or not.

New York

A town can vote out code enforcement and the job simply lands on the county, then the state. Inside the Adirondack Park there is a second layer on top.

North Carolina

The permit question has the same answer in all 100 counties. What the state gives back is a December that barely moves and a hard lesson from Helene.

North Dakota

Code enforcement is optional for the local government and plenty of townships never took it up. Here the design conversation starts with January, not July.

Ohio

A respectable annual average hiding snowbelt counties near 1.8 peak sun hours in December. The approval that catches buyers out sits with the county health district.

Oklahoma

Cheap acreage and a western half with real winter sun — but every dwelling in all 77 counties needs sewage authorisation from DEQ, unincorporated or not.

Oregon

The state closed the no-code door in 1974. Two solar climates split by the Cascade crest, and a December gap between them that changes the whole system.

Pennsylvania

The Department of Environmental Protection does not regulate private wells at all, and code enforcement is a township-by-township question. Data-center load is the live driver.

Puerto Rico

191,929 rooftop systems and 171,372 household batteries by the end of 2025. One permit regulation covers all 78 municipalities — there is no rural exit.

Rhode Island

Thirty-nine cities and towns, a published permit-fee schedule for every one of them, and the most expensive farm real estate in the USDA survey.

South Carolina

Rural land is held to the same building, electrical and plumbing codes as downtown Columbia. Helene reached much further inland than the planning assumed.

South Dakota

West of the Missouri whole counties never adopted zoning — which is also where the cheapest land and the worst weather keep turning up together.

Tennessee

A statewide code default rather than a county lottery, sitting on the priciest and fastest-rising land in USDA’s Appalachian region.

Texas

Ten acres is the number: past it the septic permit and the groundwater-district permit both fall away. ERCOT supplies the rest of the argument.

Utah

One of the few states where the legislature itself adopts the residential code. What the inversion does to a December array is the other surprise.

Vermont

No statewide residential building code was ever written here, and the largest utility has spent a decade paying its own customers to store power.

Virginia

No loophole anywhere: the Uniform Statewide Building Code reaches every county and independent city. Its narrow farm exemption is the only door in.

Washington

A county without a building department is told to contract with one that has. Cheap hydro power, delivered on lines that run under trees.

Washington, DC

Raw-land off-grid is not on offer here. What is: rooftop solar, a battery in the basement, heavy subsidy, and a derecho that took out 68,567 customers in an evening.

West Virginia

The cheapest land in Appalachia and counties that never adopted a code — with one permit that follows you into even the emptiest of them.

Wisconsin

The Uniform Dwelling Code has covered every new home built since June 1980, with no township exemption. The open question is who administers it, not whether.

Wyoming

Pastureland at $740 an acre, no statewide mandatory building code, and roughly half the state under federal ownership. Distance and wind write the design.

Not listed yet? The quote form still records your state — we keep it on file for when the installer program opens.