Brooklyn, NY According to the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority, (NYSERDA) the largest community solar project in the city has been completed and is operational. Nearly 200 households and businesses are benefitting from the 1.2-megawatt solar array which supports governor Andrew Cuomo’s mandate for half of all electricity consumed to come from renewable sources by 2030.

The solar array was developed by Daroga Solar. The project is fully subscribed with 196 total customers: 70% residential customers, 20% small commercial customers, and 10% low- to moderate-income customers. 

Alicia Barton, president and CEO, NYSERDA said, “Residents and small business owners throughout New York are rapidly embracing community solar as a means to lower their energy costs, reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment. I applaud Daroga Solar for their commitment to this project and the residents and small business owners in Brooklyn who have joined together to embrace renewable energy and support governor Cuomo’s ambitious clean energy and climate goals.”

NYSERDA through the NY-Sun program initiative provided over $850,000 in funding for the solar array, which includes a total of 3,325 solar panels on the rooftops of two locations on Pitkin Ave. Combined, the 1.2-megawatt solar array will reduce greenhouse gases by 740 metric tons annually, the equivalent of removing 160 cars from the road. Projects of this size and capacity help to provide long-term certainty to New York’s growing solar market and lower costs for residents and businesses while supporting the ambitious goal to add more than 3 gigawatts of installed solar in the state by 2023.  

“It’s an exciting time to be a part of the Community Distributed Generation evolution, especially in New York. We haven’t scratched the surface of its potential and look forward to being a leader in its development. The more projects developed, the cleaner and greener our city will become,” said David Matt, principal, Daroga Power.

NY-Sun is governor Cuomo’s $1 billion initiative to advance the scale-up of solar and move the state closer to having a sustainable, self-sufficient solar industry. Since 2011, solar in New York state has increased more than 1,000%, leveraged nearly $2.8 billion in private investments and has more than 12,000 people engaged in solar jobs across the state. 

Growing activity in community distributed generation (CDG) is in part due to the evolving Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) policies and governor Cuomo’s NY-Sun initiative, which are driving greater investments in the CDG sector.

More than 84,000 solar installations have been supported by NYSERDA throughout New York state to date, with over 5,004 projects currently in the pipeline, including 700 megawatts of community solar. In 2018, through June, New York was ranked third nationally in residential and non-residential solar installed. In addition, during the months of July and August 2018, New York completed 80 megawatts of solar projects – the highest amount completed in two months in the state’s history.

An initiative of the NY-Sun program, community solar projects increase access to solar in areas where residents may not own property or have ideal conditions to install solar panels at their location by enabling them to subscribe to a community solar project. Once households and businesses subscribe, energy is still delivered through their regular electric provider while the power produced from the community solar array is fed directly back to the electric grid. As a result, the grid is supplied with clean, renewable energy while subscribers get credits on their electric bills.