“Leased solar panels can complicate — or kill — a home sale,” a headline in the Los Angeles Times warned on March 22, 2015, and went on to cast a long shadow over third-party owned (TPO) residential photovoltaic (PV) solar energy systems.

CSE recently conducted research to find out if political ideology helps determine people’s motivations for adopting solar photovoltaics (PV) systems and, if so, whether these characteristics play a role in determining the size of installed systems.