Which Inverters Do LA Solar Homes Get? Tesla, Enphase and SolarEdge Shares in SCE’s Part of LA County, 2010–2026

Every solar system that connects to Southern California Edison’s grid is listed in the California Public Utilities Commission’s DG Stats with the equipment its installer filed: inverter make and model, panels, battery, and whether the homeowner owns the system or leases it. In Los Angeles County that is 188,111 residential systems approved from 2010 through March 2026. LADWP, Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena run their own utilities and are not in these records.

In 2010 the market belonged to wall-mounted string inverters: SMA, SunPower and Fronius together made up more than two thirds of systems, and Enphase had 8%. ABB and Power-One, which ABB bought in 2013, led from 2012 to 2016, peaking at 44% in 2013. SolarEdge, whose optimizers sit under each panel and feed one inverter on the wall, took the lead in 2017 and held it through 2022, with 59% of systems in 2019. Enphase passed it in 2023. SunPower’s AC modules — panels with a microinverter attached at the factory — reached 16% in 2021 and all but disappeared after the company’s bankruptcy in August 2024.

Net billing changed what a system includes before it changed whose equipment was in it. Across 2023 and 2024, systems approved under net billing had a battery 65% of the time and NEM 2.0 systems 16%, yet the brand mix was nearly the same: Enphase 48% against 48%, SolarEdge 31% against 33%. The Powerwall 3 first passed 1% of systems in April 2024, reached 15% in January 2025 and 28% that March, and was on about 41% of systems in early 2026. Another 5% of 2026 systems listed a Powerwall 3 beside another brand’s inverter, often a SolarEdge, Enphase or ABB unit and sometimes a model no longer sold, such as the Enphase M215, which points to a battery added next to an existing system.

Powerwall 3 systems were also larger. In 2025 the median one had 7.8 kW of panels, against 6.4 kW for SolarEdge and 5.0 kW for Enphase.

Counted by design, microinverters peaked at 57% of systems in 2023 and fell to 42% in 2025 and 37% in early 2026. The optimizer-and-wall-inverter design shrank further, from 59% in 2019 to 10%, while the battery with a built-in inverter rose to 41%. How these designs differ is explained in what a solar inverter does; how Enphase and SolarEdge systems actually perform on the same LA roofs is measured in Enphase vs SolarEdge, measured.

Leases and PPAs rose from 23% of new systems in 2023 to 47% in 2025, and the brands split along that line. In 2025, systems the homeowner owned used Enphase 53% of the time and SolarEdge 8%; among leased and PPA systems SolarEdge still had 28%. Tesla units, mostly the Powerwall 3, were common on both sides: 29% of owned systems and 32% of leased ones, plus 8% of leased systems that listed a Powerwall 3 beside another inverter.

From 2017 to 2023 the Powerwall 2 was the most common home battery, with LG’s RESU second. In 2024 Enphase had the largest share of any single product line, 34%, against 31% for the Powerwall 2 and 9% for the new Powerwall 3. In 2025 the Powerwall 3 took 48%, and 65% in early 2026. How the batteries in our own fleet are actually used is measured in how many cycles a year a home battery really does and whether a 13.5 kWh battery is too big; the products themselves are compared in Powerwall vs Enphase vs FranklinWH.

Qcells, owned by Korea’s Hanwha, was the most common panel brand on new LA County systems in every year from 2018 on, and its share grew to 34% in 2025. Behind it the order changes from year to year among LONGi, JA Solar, REC and Canadian Solar. Which of these series passed independent reliability testing is a separate question, covered in solar panel certifications and testing and the best solar panels for California.