City Rebate Makes Installation Cheaper
By Phoebe Neidl
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — “Nothin’ moves backwards, buddy. Do you want to speak to a nuclear physicist?”
This is what an incredulous Con Edison employee said to Windsor Terrace resident Peter Landy when his meter indicated that he wasn’t using any of the utility giant’s electricity.
That was two and a half years ago, right after Landy had photovoltaic panels installed on his roof, which convert sunlight into electricity. In other words, he went solar.
“We haven’t had a bill. Just the connection fee, which is around $11,” he says. “We produce more [electricity] than we use, so the meter goes backwards.”
Through a legislated arrangement called “net-metering,” Landy is able to “sell” his excess energy back into the system and build up credit with Con Ed. In the winter and at night, when the sun is less obliging, he taps into the grid for conventional electricity. “Con Ed is my battery, in a sense,” he explained.
In recent years, solar energy use for homeowners has become much more affordable with incentives and rebates from city, state and federal agencies. And Brooklynites are taking advantage of these new bargain prices.
“Brooklyn is numero uno,” says Rob Ashmore, founder of Aeon Solar, which designs and installs solar systems for homes and businesses in New York, New Jersey, California and Colorado.
“We get more calls from Brooklyn than any other borough, three times the number of calls... people are just more progressive-minded in Brooklyn.”
Ashmore has 16 projects currently underway in the borough, with a lot more in negotiation, he says. Most of them are in Park Slope, with other clients in Brooklyn Heights, Red Hook, Flatbush, Bed-Stuy and Williamsburg.
It turns out, there are conditions in Brooklyn that lend themselves well to solar energy use. In New York, “the street grid is situated pretty close to due south. If you look at buildings and look at their alignment with a compass, they have pretty good southern alignment,” says Ashmore.
The rows and rows of flat roofs offered by Brooklyn’s brownstones and industrial buildings also provide a benefit. “The advantage is that you can play with the orientation of the panels to maximize. With a pitched roof, you’re kind of locked in,” Ashmore says.
A study completed by Columbia University in 2006 estimated that Brooklyn is second only to Queens, and by a narrow margin at that, when it comes to solar potential based on available roof space.
Flat roofs also can keep the panels out of sight so the aesthetics of Brownstone Brooklyn don’t have to be affected.
“Projects done on landmark buildings require special review to ensure that panels aren’t visible from the streets surrounding the building. We are usually able to design systems that are low enough on the roof to avoid being seen,” says Ashmore.
Brooklyn and the other outer boroughs also have a particular advantage over Manhattan – not so many skyscrapers, which cause shadows. “Manhattan’s tall buildings create more shading challenges than we see in other boroughs,” said Ashmore.
He added, “Shade does have a significant effect on system performance, so it’s very important to get a detailed site assessment by a solar professional using special shade analysis tools that can determine if enough sun is received to make a project economically feasible.”
A Tool Against 'Manhattanization’
Landy is hopeful that a proliferation of solar panels could help prevent overdevelopment and “Manhattanization” in Brooklyn. If the shadow of a tall building interfered with his solar panels, he says he may be able to “challenge air rights in court because I’m an independent energy producer.”
Landy also says he didn’t just install the panels for environmental and financial reasons, but because he doesn’t like the idea of being dependent on Con Ed. “I don’t like the idea of giant utilities... If everyone in my neighborhood had these on their nice flat roofs, we could power the neighborhood. They wouldn’t have to worry about Con Ed raising the rates,” he says.
When Peter Landy installed his panels two years ago, he received a $13,000 incentive from NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Design Authority) and $5,500 in other state and federal rebates. The whole thing cost him $8,500 out of pocket.
Now the deal is getting even sweeter for homeowners and businesses looking to lower their carbon emissions, and their utility bills. Gov. Paterson signed a bill that will go into effect Jan. 1 that will give New York City residents a 35 percent rebate, distributed over the course of four years, on the cost of installing solar panels.
'Everything Costs More in NY’
The new rebate, which is an element of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative, is a huge step toward offsetting the high cost of business in the city. “Everything just costs more in New York – labor, permits, insurance, the logistics with tall buildings. We needed more incentives,” said Ashmore.
The typical price of installment for a brownstone is $45,000, says Ashmore. But after the rebates and incentives, it ends up costing about $10,000, which most homeowners recoup in six years in savings on utilities. Businesses will usually recoup in four years.
Aside from providing savings on utility bills, solar obviously provides a cleaner energy source for our congested city, and could help thwart blackouts and brownouts.
“At periods of very high demand – hot sunny afternoons when we all crank up our air conditioning – parts of the grid become vulnerable to failure because they don’t have the adequate bandwidth to carry all that juice,” explains Chris Neidl, a Brooklyn resident who initiated the “I Heart PV” campaign for the New York-based solar energy advocacy group Solar One.
“This is a real problem in New York, where electricity demand is growing by about 1.5 percent a year and where it’s difficult to build new power plants.”
Solar energy, says Neidl, while not available all the time, happens to be most productive when it is most needed, in the middle of the summer at “peak load” times. “Right when the grid is at its most vulnerable, solar system owners draw the least amount of electricity from the grid, taking strain off of it,” he says. “More solar would mean greater reliability.”
Solar One will be hosting Solar Soiree “Party for a Solar Powered New York,” where you can find out more about solar energy, at Southpaw in Brooklyn, 125 Fifth Ave., on Sunday, Dec. 7 from 7 to 10 p.m.
[Disclosure: Chris Neidl is the writer’s brother]
Can’t Get Enough Green? Visit the GreenBeat Brooklyn blog.
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