Supply energy to the surrounding community at retail rates

If you're roof or lot space is large enough, you may be able to host a community solar array that supplies electricity to the surrounding community at retail rates and yeilds a healthy return on investment.

We can help you engineer and build out, and finance a rooftop or groundmount array that produces electricity delivered through the grid to nearby customers that requires little to no maintainence and for which the marketing and billing are handled by a third party firm, such as PowerMarket.

Outsize demand for community solar

The demand for community solar as of 2021 is such that new arrays are fully subscribed within a day for two reasons: community solar operators are able to offer lower rates than ConEd, which, at .24 cents per watt, is the among the most expensive providers in the nations; and New Yorkers are keen to marry their desire for savings with desire to make a positive impact on the climate.

You can also build in an escalator to keep pace with general inflation that maintains profits but still keeps you cost-competitive with utilities.

Leasing your roof

For many property owners with lots of roof space, the prospect of being ultimately responsible for the operation of a community solar array is too far outside of the scope of their business and operations and they would prefer to lease the space.

In this case, we will lease the roof space and operate the array and maintain any protion of the roof supporting the array. All you have to is collect a site fee for an otherwise unmonetized space.

Federal, state and local incentives

The federal, state, and local government incentives supporting solar in the New York Metro area are some of the strongest in the nation:

The federal income tax credit, now at 26%, means you get a rebate check from the federal government for 26% of the total system cost;

The federal Modified Accelerated Cost-Recovery System (MACRS) allows businesses may recover investments to depreciate 100 percent of system costs and a large portion of solar-related costs, such as re-roofing, in during the tax year in which the system was installed. This is currently applicable for systems placed in service after September 27, 2017 and before January 1, 2023.

Add to that the Con Ed Megawatt Bloc rebate program—whereby Con Ed pays you $0.2 per watt of installed solar—and you can cut the total system cost by more than 50 %. UPDATE: This program is currently closed for commericial arrays as its quote has been met; however, it may be renewed in the future.

Environmental Benefits

Solar’s lifetime emissions per kwh are orders of magnitude lower than that of fossil fuels, though they’re not zero, since fossil-fueled mining and manufacturing are part of the current solar supply chain. It’s so well known as to become hackneyed that fossil fuel driven energy production leads to pollution and climate change.

Unlike utility scale solar farms, distributed (rooftop) solar does not require the clearing of vast tracts of wilderness. Rooftop solar also makes for a more resilient grid, as thousands of tiny power plants are constantly supplying electricity, instead of one large one.

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