article abstract •••

Solar in the City

From high-rises to brownstones, new installations help quench power demand in New York City.

BY JOSHUA H. RADOFF

The Lower East Side apartment/office building stands out from the New York City skyline with its system of 22 Shell 110-watt solar modules, installed by Solar Energy Systems Inc. PHOTO: SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEMS INC.

There’s nothing like a massive blackout to spur a little energy introspection. When the lights went down across eastern Canada and the United States on Aug. 14, 2003, everyone with a theory and a voice began offering up explanations, remedies and told-you-so’s. But more than a year later, a palatable explanation has yet to emerge. In New York, where the loss of light is an affront to the natural order, there’s only one point that everyone can agree on: Demand for electricity keeps growing while the construction of power plants and transmission lines in the densest place in the country becomes more and more challenging.

New York’s solar industry is hoping that some of this introspection will lead to the conclusion that the city should install as much solar power as possible—ready to crank out distributed, pollution-free electricity during those peak summer hours when air conditioners are set to high, electricity prices are soaring and the grid is strained to the point of browning or blacking out. And though solar power installations may be hard to imagine in a landscape of skyscrapers and shadow, more and more systems are cropping up in unexpected places all over the city.

Contact Radoff at josh@greenhomenyc.org.