There are more than one million buildings in the five boroughs of New York City, however determining how many of these rooftops are candidates for large-scale solar systems and how this would affect the grid is a challenge. The recent growth of large-scale PV installations on the electric grid resulted in the need to address potentially adverse technical impacts in certain locations. The NYC Grid Ready Solar project aims to reduce the technical and financial barriers for the interconnection of large-scale (> 200 kW) solar PV projects to the grid in NYC. For NYC buildings with large-scale PV potential CUNY, Con Edison, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) analyzed the technical risk factors for grid interconnection, and created public resources to allow developers to make informed decisions regarding project location and cost. These resources include a layer on the NY Solar Map showing whether buildings may or may not face interconnection issues; a guide to the order of magnitude of costs for typical mitigation strategies; and an overview of short and long-term solutions for medium and low opportunity buildings. The project was supported by NYSERDA and was led by Sustainable CUNY in collaboration with Consolidated Edison, NREL and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Read the Report: Grid Ready: Strategies for Interconnecting Large-Scale PV in New York City
Is Your Building 'Grid Ready'?
Take these steps to view the analysis of properties in NYC with the potential for large-scale solar systems (>200 kw):
Process
Your installer or contractor is responsible for determining if your building is ideally suited for the grid connection of a large scale solar installation. The NYC Grid Ready map layer can help determine feasibility. It is recommended that the below information is reviewed before the steps to submit are begun. All interconnection applications are submitted online via Con Edison’s Project Center. Con Edison requires that all documents listed in the NYS Standardized Interconnection Requirements (SIR) be submitted before a project can be reviewed. Con Edison Required Forms
Taking the following steps can help speed up your application review:
Customer requested outages (to de-energize the service to connect PV system equipment to the existing switchgear, for example) and any inspections required by Con Edison will provided at no cost to the customer during normal business hours (Monday – Friday, 7:00am – 3:00pm excluding holidays). However, it is important to note that the cost of any portion of a customer requested outage that is completed outside normal business hours will be the responsibility of the customer and will include applicable overtime rates.