How New York City Is Turning Its Thousands of Roofs Into Pow…
How New York City Is Turning Its Thousands of Roofs Into Power Providers New York City is home to thousands of acres of rooftop some of the most expensive electricity in the country. Yet New York has been slower than other big cities in tapping into one constant source of clean energy: the sun. Now though, some of the biggest expanses of flat roof in New York are being turned into sources of cheap and green electricity. This year, the corporate owner of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan completed the installation of the country’s largest array of solar panels on an apartment complex. And soon, the Bronx could have an even larger one, at the massive Co-Op City complex. In June, the state said that it aimed for 70 percent of its power to be generated from renewable sources by 2030. Two months before, the New York City Council passed an ordinance that will require most new buildings to be topped with solar panels or roofs covered in grass or other vegetation. The project at StuyTown, as the complex is known, incorporated more than 9,000 solar panels onto 56 rooftops, making it by far the biggest in Manhattan. It effectively doubled the borough’s solar capacity, adding 3.9 megawatts, or enough to power more than 1,100 apartments. The city and state have driven much of the investment in solar power by providing tax breaks and other incentives to homeowners and landlords. The state incentives began in 2014 with a goal of creating 3 gigawatts — 3,000 megawatts — of solar capacity statewide by 2023. Still, the projects illustrate the limitations so far of solar power, given that they would produce only a fraction of the electricity consumed on their own sites. But even though not enough energy is generated to power all of the complex, the solar energy will take pressure off the power distribution network on hot summer days when demand from customers is peaking. New York now ranks sixth among American cities in the capacity of its installed solar panels, according to Environment America, an advocacy group. Still, its total of about 200 megawatts is less than half of the capacity in Los Angeles, which has the highest capacity of any city in the country. Currently, the rooftop solar panels produce only a fraction of the electricity used in the buildings on which they are installed. Which of following strategies would best combat the problem of insufficient electricity generation from the rooftop solar panels?