FEATURE - Solar chic becomes fashionable in New York
Date: 02-Aug-04
Country: USA
Author: Timothy Gardner
Susan Boyle, 30, who works full time converting the 1850s brewery and icehouse in gritty Brooklyn she and her husband live in, glued thin solar strips on the roof to make help make its spacious lofts energy-efficient.
Singer-songwriter Dar Williams, 37, and her husband are topping their Harlem brownstone with solar panels to avoid running their lights on electricity from a nearby nuclear plant.
What is it that makes these New Yorkers willing to pay $12,000 to $30,000 for solar equipment and installation? Maybe its the states incentives that refund homeowners more than half of that money, or that the systems chop about 75 percent off their electricity bills.
Perhaps its that New York Citys residential electricity costs, already the nations highest except for Hawaii, could rise nine percent next spring after power company ConEd (ED.N: Quote, Profile, Research) filed this April with regulators to raise its rates. Or maybe its just because New York, like San Francisco on the West Coast, serves as a beacon to nonconformists.
For whatever reason, the typical solar consumer isnt a backwoods environmentalist anymore. A small but growing number of homeowners in the metropolis, an area not known for year-round blistering sunlight, are converting solar rays into electricity. And in times of low demand and strong sun, they can even sell the electricity back to the grid.
"Traditionally solar applications have been off-grid in remote areas. But the biggest growth in recent history has been grid-connected and we believe its going to continue," said Ali Iz, the head of GE Energy, a business of General Electric Co. (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , which bought former leading solar company Astropower last year.
About 35 solar systems been installed over the last few years in New York City with a combined output of 600 kilowatts, or enough to power 600 average homes, according to Washington D.C.s Solar Energies Industry Association. New Yorks trendsetters are in the center of an East Coast solar movement happening in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, that is second only to solar usage in the Wests California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.
Solar users have to think, and invest, long term. Breaking even on their investments can take as long as 25 years in New York, or as little as seven years in New Jersey, where state incentives are among the nations most generous.
While Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry promises to use American innovation to wean the nation from foreign oil, President George W. Bushs plans for incentives for residential solar installations are contained in a comprehensive energy bill that has been held up in Congress.
SOLAR STATUS
Along with the long payback comes something easier to swallow: status. Solar customers use advanced technology to draw virtually pollution-less power. They save oil from the violent Middle East that is selling at a record over $42 per barrel, coal from the seams of mountaintops in Appalachia, and reliance on nuclear power, which produces lasting toxic waste.
"The progressive ones in my neighborhood feel guilty because they havent done it yet," said Benedict, who hosted a party after consultants installed her panels.
Steve Taub, alternative energy analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Massachusetts, said, "Most consumers dont make decisions based on how long the payback is. There is a social prestige associated with solar, which is worth something to people."
The trendsetters, as well as a few corporations that are constructing green buildings in Manhattan, wont offer massive relief to New Yorks stretched electric system any time soon. Solar panels in the Durst Organizations edifice at 4 Times Square, for example, provide a mere 0.03 percent of the buildings power.
But they may be leading a drive in which the United States, the worlds largest energy consumer, could narrow the gap with Japan and Germany, the worlds
