What a New York City roof produces in a year
Planning here starts from roughly 1,279 kWh per year for every kW of panels installed. That figure is a modelled estimate rather than a measurement: it comes from applying a standard performance ratio to satellite irradiance data for the area, so treat it as a planning number and expect a surveyed quote to land somewhere either side of it.
Multiply it out to see the shape of a project. A small array of a few kW covers a slice of a typical household bill, and a larger one covers more, but the ceiling in New York City is usually the roof rather than the arithmetic. Rowhouse and small-multifamily roofs carry parapets, bulkheads, stair penetrations, water tanks and neighbouring walls, and every one of those either takes up area or throws shade across part of the day.
Orientation is the other lever. A south-facing plane gets the strongest full-day output, east and west planes shift production toward morning and afternoon, and a north-facing plane is rarely worth panelling. On a flat roof, which is the common form across much of the city, the array is tilted and spaced by the installer instead, and the spacing needed to stop one row shading the next is what limits how many panels the roof holds.
Applying to Con Edison, and what the 10-day target covers
Con Edison serves New York City for electricity, and small residential solar of 50 kW or less is processed through its online interconnection portal. There is no application fee, and Con Edison targets completing the process within 10 business days. In practice your installer files this rather than you, but it is worth asking to see the submission, because the application is what establishes the system that gets connected and how it is metered.
That target covers the utility side only. It is not a permit, it is not an inspection, and it does not include the time your installer spends designing the array or the time any building approval takes. Treat the interconnection as one of several parallel tracks rather than the whole approval.
Ask your installer to confirm the system size on the application matches what is actually going on the roof. A change after the fact means going back to Con Edison, which can add weeks to a project that otherwise looked quick.
Your exports are valued hour by hour, not at retail
New residential customers at New York's major utilities are compensated under the Value of Distributed Energy Resources framework, the Value Stack, rather than legacy flat net metering. Exported energy is valued using time-of-use and location-based components, including energy, capacity, environmental and demand reduction credits, and the rates and terms are set by the New York Department of Public Service. Con Edison administers its own tariff under that oversight.
The practical consequence is that a kWh you send to the grid at noon and a kWh you buy back at eight in the evening are not the same thing. A Customer Benefit Contribution charge also applies to new distributed generation customers. So the old mental model, where the meter runs backwards and your bill nets to zero, does not describe what happens in New York City.
This changes how a system should be sized and quoted. Ask any installer to model the compensation for your address and rate class, using your own consumption pattern, rather than quoting a flat cents-per-kWh saving. The more of your own generation you use on site as it is produced, the less of it is exposed to the export valuation at all.
If you own your roof: detached homes and rowhouses
The households who can decide this on their own are a small share of the city. Single-family detached houses are 9.1 percent of the housing stock, and single-unit attached rowhouses, the classic outer-borough form, are another 7.2 percent. Those owners hold their own roof and can move at the pace of their own paperwork.
Rowhouse roofs come with a specific set of constraints: they are narrow, they often sit between taller neighbours, and the usable plane can be broken up by bulkheads and mechanical equipment. A shading survey earns its cost here, because a wall two doors down can take several winter hours a day off a corner of the array.
Two-unit structures are 12.1 percent of the stock and three-to-four unit buildings another 9.2 percent, and those roofs are frequently shared across a party wall or split between owners. Before spending money on a design, establish who owns the roof surface, who owns the airspace above it, and which meter the array would be connected to. Those three answers decide whether the project is possible at all.
The money that still exists, and the money that does not
Start with what is gone, because that is where budgets go wrong. The NY-Sun residential incentive block for the Con Edison region, worth $0.15 per watt, closed on May 29, 2025. The income-qualified Affordable Solar block, worth $0.80 per watt, closed on October 15, 2025. There is no residential block open in this region, so a New York City quote should carry no NY-Sun line at all. If one appears on a proposal, ask the contractor to show you the current block status before you sign anything.
The 30 percent federal residential credit under Internal Revenue Code Section 25D applied through December 31, 2025 and does not apply to a purchased home system placed in service after that date, so a 2026 purchase cannot claim it. Any payback figure built on it is wrong. If you go solar through a lease or a power purchase agreement instead, the provider may be able to claim the business version of the credit and pass part of the value through in your rate, which is a question for the provider and your own tax advisor rather than something to assume.
What remains is the state credit. New York's Solar Energy System Equipment Credit, claimed on Form IT-255 with your state return, is 25 percent of qualified residential solar expenditures capped at $5,000. Unused credit carries forward for up to five years if it is larger than your current liability, and it applies to purchased, leased and power-purchase-agreement systems at your primary New York residence. It is the incentive that is left in this market, and you claim it yourself rather than receiving it through your installer.
If your roof belongs to a building rather than to you
Nearly half of the city, 48.9 percent of all housing units, sits in buildings of 20 or more apartments. In those buildings solar is not a homeowner permit, it is a co-op or condo board decision plus building-owner approval, and the roof is usually already carrying mechanical plant, water tanks and access routes that the building cannot give up.
The economics also work differently. An array on a shared roof normally connects to a house meter serving common areas rather than to individual apartments, so the benefit lands on the building budget rather than on your own bill. That is not a reason to skip it, but it is a different proposition from a homeowner installing on a house, and it should be presented to a board that way.
If you are an apartment resident rather than a board member, the useful first step is finding out who controls the roof and whether the building has ever had an assessment done. A single well-scoped proposal to the board goes further than several residents asking separately.