Solar energy could help solve New York’s power problems. So why are blue silicon panels missing from the city skyline?

Susan Metz’s brownstone in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn looks like all the other brownstones on her block, except for one thing.

“I pay no electricity for six months, seven months of the year,” said Metz recently.

That’s because Metz has 18 solar panels on her roof. For the past three and a half years, Metz has been powering her apartment with sunshine.

Located on a quiet residential street a few blocks north of Prospect Park, Metz’s apartment takes up the first two floors of the four-story brownstone she owns. Metz, a 64-year-old retired English teacher with short gray hair and reading glasses on a chain around her neck, first learned about the possibility of solar power through a presentation at the Park Slope Food Coop on Union Street in Brooklyn.

“I had been interested in solar for a long time,” Metz said, “but I had no idea what the potential or what the options were for a brownstone like this” As it turns out, further discussion with the man who gave the presentation and then with a solar installer made it clear that a small solar system would work well on Metz’s home. The house has a flat roof and virtually no shade. A year later, her system was up and running.

The total cost of the system was $30,261, but a rebate Metz received from a New York state incentives programs paid for about half of it. Though it will be a few years before Metz achieves the maximum financial benefit of her solar panels, because of the way she financed the system, when that day comes the payoff will be huge.

“Then I pay only the connection fee to be on the grid and something during the winter,” she said, “so my electric bill effectively goes down from over $1,000 to like a couple of hundred.”

Metz, who once ran for State Assembly as a Green Party candidate, also won’t have to worry so much about rising energy costs in the coming years or the impact she has on the environment.

“I expect electricity will be a lot more expensive, so the savings will be substantial,” said Metz. “And my feeling of doing the right thing will be enhanced. Because I know I’m doing everything I can to use my resources in a sustainable way.”

When giving a tour of her apartment, Metz climbed the rickety ladder up to the roof and admired the solar panels. They are a deep blue color edged in silver, made of silicon, and mounted at a slight angle to catch the maximum amount of sunlight. To the casual observer, the panels are probably not much to look at, but to Metz they are a thing of beauty.

“And look how natural it is,” she said, pointing. “Doesn’t it seem like they just belong here?”

Metz stared out over the other rooftops of her neighborhood—rooftops that are conspicuously empty. Only one other brownstone in her neighborhood has a solar system of its own.

“I was hoping that this district would take an interest in it,” she said, “but I’m afraid it didn’t happen.”

With 14,000 acres of unshaded rooftop space, according to the non-profit organization New York Sun Works, New York City has vast potential for solar energy. However, some critics charge that current government policies and Con Ed practices are stifling the fledgling solar industry. Installers speak of redundant safety and feasibility inspections and stalled paperwork that greatly add to the costs in time and money of each project. While the cost of solar power is steadily decreasing worldwide, the price has actually gone up in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC, the city’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in the next two decades, calls for a sizable increase in solar energy in the city. But it falls far short of the progress made in New Jersey, whose $100 million incentives program and solar-friendly electricity policies have made it the best state for solar in the country outside California. All in all, New York remains far behind the curve when it comes to solar.

While solar owners like Metz suffer a financial burden, solar—also called photovoltaic or PV—installers probably experience the worst of New York City’s solar industry pitfalls. Their role as middlemen between the customers and the various local and state agencies involved in installing a solar project is difficult and often frustrating. .

Solar Energy Systems is one such installation company, housed in a six-story industrial warehouse taking up several blocks in the northwest tip of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, past all the small residential streets and mom-and-pop storefronts. Most of the warehouse’s other tenants are artists or craftsmen. On one wall of the office hangs a poster of the trendy Brooklyn restaurant Habana Outpost, whose solar installation was a favorite project of Solar Energy Systems’ owners David Buckner and Chris Moustakis.

Since forming their partnership in 2002, Buckner and Moustakis have struggled to grow their business. After almost six years as a company, Solar Energy Systems is just now breaking even financially.

“I knew it was going to take a while to get a business started up in the industry,” Buckner said. “I didn’t realize how long it was going to take. Like I always say, if I look back I probably wouldn’t have done it because it was tough. Really tough.”

Buckner, 37, and Moustakis, 42, did not always dream of becoming solar installers. They originally set out on the stereotypical New York career trajectory on Wall Street. Yet, as the stock exchange entered the digital age and Buckner’s job as a broker on the stock market floor threatened to become obsolete, he decided he wanted to do something completely different with his life.

“It just happened that this was kind of interesting to me,” said Buckner. “I have a brother who’s in construction. My dad’s a chemical engineer. So I have a little bit of an inkling for it.”

After attending a solar conference in Massachusetts, Buckner began working part-time as a solar installer in 1998. Moustakis joined him a couple of years later, and the two formed a company called Alternative Power with their friend Anthony Pereira. When the two parted ways with Pereira in 2002, Buckner and Moustakis changed the name to Solar Energy Systems.

“I didn’t get into this because it was an environmental thing,” Buckner said. However, “I liked the fact that it’s associated with it and it does reduce emissions.”

Buckner and Moustakis have an easy partnership, cracking jokes and finishing each other’s sentences. Moustakis is the louder of the two and often interrupts his soft-spoken colleague. The two somewhat resemble the comedic duo Laurel and Hardy, although Buckner is a bit taller and Moustakis, though portly, doesn’t have a mustache.

Their senses of humor must have come in handy in the early years in the solar business. In the early 2000s, few people knew solar was even possible in New York. As one of only two or three companies who were installing PV at the time and without any sort of marketing budget, finding customers was sometimes difficult. Moustakis and Buckner experienced long periods when no money was coming in.

“From having a corporate card and running around New York City, being a jackass, to having no income for a couple of years and really like—,” Buckner started to say. “I was bar-backing to kind of make it by for a while.”

Starting Solar Energy Systems with just Buckner and Moustakis meant finishing installations as fast as possible so that they could get back to the office to try to move more units.

“I remember stupidly like being up on roofs—,” Buckner began.

“In the dark with a flashlight,” Moustakis interjected, referring to how the two sometimes worked day and night to put in panels.

“In the dark wiring stuff, flashlight in hand, just trying to get this thing done,” said Buckner.

“We didn’t have enough employees,” said Moustakis.