نبذة مختصرة : This paper tests for the presence of behavioral biases in household decisions to adopt solar photovoltaic installations using exogenous variation in weather. I find that residential technology uptake responds to exceptional weather, defined as deviations from the long-term mean, in line with the average time gap between decision-making and completion of the installation. In particular, a one standard deviation increase in sunshine hours during the purchase period leads to an approximate increase of 4.7% in weekly solar PV installations. This effect persists in aggregate data. I consider a range of potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence for projection bias and salience as key drivers of my results. ; I would like to thank Jerome Adda, Stefan Ambec, Bryan Bollinger, Sylvain ChabeFerret, Antonia Diaz, Andreas Gerster, Ken Gillingham, Sebastian Houde, Andrea Ichino, Martin Kesternich, Matt Kotchen, Matt Neidell, Francois Salanie, Fabiano Schivardi, Joe Shapiro, and seminar participants at the Atlantic Workshop on Energy & Environmental Economics, EMEE, Energy and Climate Conference Toulouse, FAERE, IAERE, Northeast Workshop on Energy Policy & Environmental Economics, Workshop on Economic Theories & Low-Carbon Policies, World Congress of the Econometric Society, European University Institute, Goteborg University, RWI Essen, Toulouse School of Economics, Yale University, and ZEW Mannheim for helpful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to the Editor and two anonymous referees for their insightful feedback. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No 772331). A previous version of this article has been circulated under the name "Projection Bias in Solar Electricity Markets". Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature.
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