Sun City

These days, times aren’t quite so tough. In the past two years, the company has grown from three to ten employees and has begun to shift from installing exclusively small residential systems to more large commercial projects, where it is easier to make a profit. Although the number of PV installers servicing New York City has grown, increased awareness about the potential of solar has resulted in a steady stream of customers – including Susan Metz. Having more employees also means Solar Energy Systems can juggle multiple projects at the same time.

The biggest frustrations now come from working with Con Ed to get solar systems connected to the city’s electrical grid. Most PV owners need more electricity than their solar systems provide and so they must be connected to the grid to make up the difference. If the solar panels produce excess electricity the power can also feed back into the grid. Con Ed must approve all such connections and install a special meter to regulate the back and forth flow of electricity.

Metz’s meter is located in her cellar. It connects to the inverter, a device which converts the energy harnessed by the solar panels into a usable form of electricity. The small gray inverter box is covered in dust and cobwebs. Metz pointed to a digital display next to the inverter. “Look—now we’re getting 1 kilowatt 50 from that beautiful sun, right?” she said. “And it’s 3 kilowatt hours accumulated per day.” A typical two-bedroom New York City apartment uses about 25 kilowatt hours of electricity each day.

A cable snakes across the cellar ceiling from the inverter to the Con Ed meter box. “Now most likely the meter is running backwards,” said Metz. If the solar panels produce more electricity than the apartment uses and the excess energy feeds back into the grid, the meter “runs backwards.” Metz receives credits on her electricity bill whenever her panels feed power to the grid. This process is called “net metering.”

In June, the New York State Assembly passed a bill raising the maximum size of a solar system eligible for net metering from under 10 kilowatts to up to 2 megawatts (a megawatt is 100 kilowatts). Metz’s system is rated at about 3.3 kilowatts. While this is a welcome change for installers, especially when it comes to large commercial projects that were not eligible for net metering before, it’s not clear how quickly Con Ed will be able to comply with the new law.

“Depending on certain grid locations or whatever, [a lobbyist I talked to was] basically saying that if you’re Con Edison and there’s a net metering law now and your grid can’t accept backwards power you’re going to have to make it to where it can,” said Buckner. “And you know, they’re not going to like that. It’s going to cost money.”

Con Ed claims net metering restrictions are necessary for the safety of its employees and other electricians working on the grid.

“We’re eager to support green solutions, but there are a couple of priorities,” said Con Ed spokesperson Chris Olert. “Number one priority is safety for our customers and safety for our employees.”

The second biggest concern is a commitment to Con Ed’s shareholders, Olert said. The utility is required by law to provide electricity to all the customers within its territory 365 days a year. Those with solar panels might only need power from Con Ed on certain days and some also have the option of selling unused power back to the utility. From a financial standpoint, that doesn’t make much sense for Con Ed.

“To deliver that electricity we’ve invested millions of dollars,” Olert said. “We’ve made investments to deliver it to them 365. Now the rules are changed by somebody other than us.”

Con Ed has also said that due to the nature of the city’s grid, installing too much solar could overload the circuits and actually cause shortages. While these claims may be factual, members of the solar community are calling for a third-party assessment to test the grid’s technical capacity.

“Con Edison had done one, so that’s the problem—that Con Edison had done one,” said Lara Ettenson, a former New York City energy consultant and co-author of a CUNY study on solar in the city. “We need someone who’s not Con Edison and who doesn’t have an interest in the study.”

Olert said he did not see why Con Ed would not agree to such an assessment. “We are the most transparent utility in the state,” he said.

But net metering restrictions are just one of many issues PV installers face when dealing with Con Ed.

“It’s so splintered,” said Moustakis of the utility. “You know, some of the guys are really great. Some of the procedures are smooth. You submit it, they answer you in a few weeks. It’s not a problem. Then there are other jobs that just end up in the abyss. You can’t get answers. You send paperwork six times.”

For one frustrating project it took two years for Con Ed to install a net meter, the device which measures the electricity flow both exiting and entering the grid at a certain point. While clients understand it isn’t Solar Energy System’s fault if delays like this occur, it can be a discouraging factor for those interested in installing PV on their homes and businesses.

After a solar company works with a customer to design a system, Con Ed must approve that design in order for the project to move forward.

“Even if they like the design then they come back with comments,” said Moustakis. “But there’s no rhyme or reason sometimes to the comments.”

Depending on who at Con Ed is assigned to a particular project, Solar Energy Systems may get very different results and feedback. If the company submits two identical systems with different Con Ed representatives, one may get approved and the other come back with half a dozen comments of things that must be changed, Moustakis said. One particularly irksome project Buckner described went through three different Con Ed engineers because the utility kept reassigning its employees and each one came up with different problems for Buckner and Moustakis to address.

The two believe part of the trouble with Con Ed stems from the fact that there is no separate division within the utility to deal with solar. Instead, PV falls under the jurisdiction of the distributed generation department, which deals with any outside power source connected to the grid. The majority of these sources are large generators that produce several megawatts of power.

“You’re giving them this little 50 kW [project] and I don’t know what it is,” said Moustakis. “They can’t treat those big projects like that. Maybe they do.”

“Well I think they do but the big projects, you know, have a budget for it,” Buckner said.

When discussing a different project where Con Ed took a long time to get back to them, Buckner came up with another potential reason for why the utility gives them so many difficulties.

“So we submitted the package,” said Buckner, referring to the paperwork the company submitted to Con Ed. “You get it to a customer rep. He’s—I was going to say he or she but I’ve never met, there’s never been a woman customer rep.”

“No, I’ve never met a woman rep,” Moustakis said. “I’ve actually never dealt with a woman in Con Edison.”

“Maybe that’s their problem,” Buckner said.

For commercial projects, dealing with Con Ed’s inconsistencies is not just frustrating, it’s expensive – the solar company must pay a fee each time it submits paperwork to Con Ed. Solar Energy Systems learned the hard way just how costly that can be while working on its first two commercial installations.

“They sent us an estimate that it was going to be like $1,200 to review each system,” said Moustakis. “It came back to be like eight grand to review each system.”

Never mind the haggling over project specifics or the fees. Just getting an initial response from Con Ed after submitting all the required paperwork can be a nightmare.

“First of all, they’re supposed to respond within five days, according to the New York Public Service Commission that regulates the utilities,” Buckner said. “So that almost never happens.”

Another recent project, which Moustakis submitted last July, took until December for Con Ed to get back to them. Buckner admitted that that was a special case, but waits of weeks and even months are the norm. “It’s a pretty detailed package that you give them,” he said. “And they lose it usually the first time. You have to give it back to them.”

Other solar installers agree. “For me as an installer, being in the trenches, I’d say generally you have to be very persistent and then complain or threaten that you’re going to complain to the Public Service Commission,” said Richard Klein, owner of Manhattan-based Quixotic Systems. “You don’t want to run a business that way, but you’re kind of forced to.”

Olert said he was unaware of any such problems or delays. “I do a lot research on this and I haven’t heard anything about it,” he said.

On the customer side, Susan Metz seemed oblivious to any potential problems Solar Energy Systems might have had with Con Ed during the installation of her solar panels. When asked what her experience was with the utility she said, “Ninguna problema,” not a single problem.