Sun City

Though Con Ed’s bureaucracy is a source of constant frustration for them, Buckner and Moustakis have little negative to say about the city’s procedures for installing solar panels and the paperwork involved there. “If you follow their guidelines it’s not terrible,” Moustakis said. However, those guidelines took some getting used to, especially recent changes to the installation process.

“Any time you’re used to doing something a certain way and then it changes, the first thing you want to do is cry about it,” said Buckner. “We do the same thing. A year and a half ago the city said, OK new rules. You got to have a third-party UL [Underwriters Laboratories] certification on the whole system. It’s like, holy shit, you know, we’ve got all these systems out there, ten or 12 systems where we have a fee involved and time and just trying to figure it all out that we never had to do that before.”

“And now we’ve figured it out,” said Moustakis.

“And now it’s straightforward,” Buckner said.

“It’s straightforward,” agreed Moustakis.

“The guy, the UL inspector’s coming to the Christmas party so it’s like…it just takes time,” said Buckner.

The two speak of the UL certification nonchalantly, but it’s a process that nationwide only exists in New York City. It also costs the installers, and ultimately the customers, an additional $2,000 per system. The city began requiring UL inspections because some people were installing PV panels illegally.

“If they were going to do a job illegally they’re still going to do it and they’re not going to tell the city or any Con Ed or whatever,” said Klein, owner of Quixotic Systems. “So it just hurts us who are doing things by the books.”

Buckner was hopeful the rules would soon be changed in the installers’ favor, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The UL certification is the latest in a series of time-consuming and costly inspections that are required for all new solar installations in the city. Projects also need to be inspected by Con Ed, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) which oversees state-run incentives for solar owners, and the Department of Buildings..

Aside from the inspections, New York City presents other financial hurdles for solar installers that are inherent to the cost of doing any type of business in the city.

“You would think that with oil at $100 a barrel we would be selling these systems off the shelves,” said Klein. “It’s still very hard to sell out of New York City because your labor costs and shipping costs and everything else are just higher than anywhere else in the country.”

Because New York is a vertical city, many projects also require the use of a crane, which can add $3,000 to $4,000 to the total cost.

“If you’re doing a small residential system it almost gets to the point where it doesn’t pay,” Klein said, “and you really can’t make any money doing these small systems.”

That is a big reason why Solar Energy Systems is making the transition to commercial projects.

“The movement’s got to go from only green or greenwashing or whatever you want to call it to it’s-got-to-be-economically-feasible,” said Buckner. “And it’s getting close in the larger projects.”

Klein said it more simply: “Let me put it this way: in most places in the country the price of solar has gone down, by and large. New York City is probably the only place where the price is going up, in the wrong direction.”

The people who own solar panels in the city therefore represent a fairly elite group. They are not necessarily the wealthiest New Yorkers, but they are all willing to pay more to do something good for the environment.

“All our residential customers have been pretty great,” said Moustakis. “And they—”

“They’re not all like, rich,” Buckner interrupted. “They just believe in it.”

Klein noticed a similar trend. “I think that more people that we’ve dealt with are more middle income than upper income,” he said.

That may be true, but PV panels are a significant investment that not everyone can afford under the current policies, a fact which did not escape Susan Metz.

“So I’m affluent enough to put panels up and lower my bills,” Metz said. “What kind of stupid thing is that?”

While most residential system owners tend to be people with a certain amount of expendable income, Solar Energy Systems gets a wide range of customers for their residential and commercial projects.

“We’re all over the place,” Buckner said. “We have people wanting to put up a half-a-million dollar canopy over the entrance of a building that won’t ever see sunlight, you know just because, and right down to a couple from Guyana out in the Far Rockaways who, you know, they did a renovation on their house and they got the low interest loan…she just says it’s the best thing she’s ever done. So it’s a real broad spectrum of people that you’re working with”

“A lot of doctors,” Moustakis said. “No lawyers. Never one.”