How do you forecast demand for residential solar panels in new markets?

Start with a bottom-up approach — pull census data on housing stock, then layer in electricity rates and solar irradiance data (NREL's PVWatts tool is great for this). Cross-reference with SEIA adoption curves from comparable markets to sanity-check your numbers. Payback period sensitivity is usually your biggest demand driver, so model a few scenarios around local incentives and utility rates.