MTA Solar Roof Initiative

Last week the MTA issued a request for proposals for the potential lease of millions of square feet of roof space to companies interested in utilizing it to generate solar power.  The agency is billing it as a sustainability initiative (generating renewable solar energy) and a potential source of new revenue from the lease or electricity proceeds.  The MTA cites a growing trend in similar systems installed on other industrial or warehouse buildings elsewhere in New York City.  You can view the RFP here.

Rendering of the Coney Island Facility roof with panels
(Photo: MTA)

The MTA says it has identified more than 100 bus depots, train yards, repair shops, and parking lots across its various operating agencies, totaling more than 10 million square feet of potential leasable space.  The agency estimates this is enough to generate more than 100 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 18,000 households.

This is not the MTA's first foray into the field of solar energy.  While they have always had a smattering of solar panels on some different facilities, there has not been a concerted effort to utilize roof space agency-wide.  The MTA last attempted an expansion of solar energy at its facilities in 2008.  At that time, MTA's director of policy Ernest Tollerson told The New York Times that the cost of the electricity generated from the panels was about twice what it would be if it just bought it commercial from Consolidated Edison, the primary power utility for most of New York City and portions of the Hudson Valley.  At the time, the MTA's goal was to use renewable energy sources to produce 7% of their electricity by 2015.  But that was just before the financial crisis, and, as far as I can tell, the expansion never panned out.

To start off the process this time around, the MTA is offering up seven properties to potential bidders, together generating an estimated 6.5 megawatts of electricity.  These locations are:

• NYCT Ulmer Park Bus Depot in Gravesend, Brooklyn
• NYCT Queens Village Bus Depot in Queens Village, Queens
• NYCT Coney Island Maintenance Facility in Gravesend, Brooklyn
• NYCT Jamaica Maintenance Facility in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens
• LIRR Hillside Support Facility in Hillside, Queens
• MNR Cortlandt Station Parking Lot in the Town of Cortlandt,  Westchester County
• MNR Wassaic Station Operations Lot in the Town of Amenia, Dutchess County

The MTA did not say how much cash it thought the solar roof iniative could bring in.  I suppose time will tell what results the RFP yields.  While the cost of installing solar panels has come down a fair bit in recent years, the return period is still somewhat too long for most people, which has slowed their adoption, especially in residential settings.  Perhaps the MTA will be able to get better results on a larger scale with a broad program like this, but if the costs involved are similar to what they were in 2008 (where generating solar electricity would cost 100% more than buying it from commercially available sources) it might be wise to forgo the idea for now, and leave the development and generation of renewable energy to the experts—New York State already has a goal of reaching 70% renewable energy by 2030 as part of the state's Reforming the Energy Vision strategy.

Solar panels at the Deer Park LIRR station parking lot
(Photo: Marush Conner/Solar Panel Highway)

Suffolk County's LIRR station parking lots at Brentwood and Deer Park are already covered with solar panels as part of the Eastern Long Island Solar Project.  The solar panels at Brentwood generate 1 MW of electricity, and the panels at Deer Park station generate 2.25 MW of electricity.  These are part of a broader initiative Suffolk County undertook to install solar panels at a number of county facilities, including the H. Lee Dennison Building and the North County Complex in Hauppauge, the Cohalan Court Complex in Central Islip, and the Riverhead County Center in Riverside.  The solar panels at these six facilities generate roughly $320,000 of income per year for Suffolk County.  The county also planned to install solar panels at the Ronkonkoma station parking lots (to generate 5 MW of electricity), but those plans have stalled to preserve the space for potential TOD projects near the station.  This shows the potential fragility of these arrangements and how quickly things can go sour, and end up costing us money in the long run—as a result of pulling the Ronkonkoma site off the table after the contract was negotiated, the county ended up having to pay the vendor $10.8 million—and they are not generating a single watt of electricity.

These decisions require careful consideration, since installing solar panels often locks in the land use for the life of the lease (often 20 years), limiting what the MTA can do on the property or with that facility during this time.  While utilizing bus depot or maintenance facility rooftops would likely be feasible, since these are usually in out of the way places to begin with and are unlikely to move, committing to long-term leases at station parking lots (especially in the suburbs) would likely be unwise.  If the MTA wants to promote sustainability and improve the environment, the best thing it can do is support transit oriented development (directly or indirectly) on its station parking lots—having more places people can live and take mass transportation to work instead of driving would have a much more significant impact on the environment.  If they were to leave a large station parking lot undeveloped and instead just put solar panels, the overall environmental impact of everyone driving their cars to the station would likely more than cancel out the carbon reductions from solar panels.