How do you forecast demand for residential solar in a new market?

Honestly, I'd start top-down to sanity-check the ceiling — pull census data on owner-occupied housing, cross with average electricity rates (NREL's State Solar Scorecard is great for this), and layer in utility incentive data. Then validate bottom-up by interviewing 20-30 homeowners and a handful of local installers to gut-check willingness to pay and awareness levels. Early markets are tricky because adoption curves can inflect fast once a neighbor-effect kicks in, so build in a bull/base/bear scenario rather than a single number.