New York City is the only place in the state where the city itself pays you to go solar, and the only place where a fire code and a flat roof decide the design before the economics do. The property tax abatement returns 30% of your system cost over four years, but it has to be filed with the Department of Buildings by a registered architect or a professional engineer, which means your installer either has one or you do not get it. The four companies below work Con Edison territory, and the one we rank first builds for nothing but New York City roofs.
The top solar companies in New York City are Brooklyn SolarWorks, Venture Home, Momentum Solar and Trinity Solar, based on EcoGen America’s vetting framework. Brooklyn SolarWorks leads because it was built for this city specifically: flat roofs, the FDNY access code, co-op and condo buildings, and landmarked homes are its whole business rather than an exception it handles.
Our Top 4 Solar Installers Serving New York City
Each company below was checked against its own stated record, with NYC-based operators weighted ahead of regional names. Placement is never sold.
Brooklyn SolarWorks
The only company on this page that exists solely to solve New York City roofs. It was founded in 2015 on the observation that the industry designed for suburban pitched roofs and skipped the city’s small, shared-wall, flat-roofed townhouses entirely. Its answer is a patented solar canopy that lifts the array above the roof deck, which is what keeps a design legal under the FDNY access rules and still worth building. It works condos and co-ops as a named service line, and its founders hold NABCEP Technical Sales and NABCEP PV Installation Professional certifications. Get the warranty term written into your contract, as with anyone.
Venture Home
The Northeast’s volume leader, with New York inside its core territory and a 25-year warranty behind the work. Repeatability is the argument: on the city’s recurring building types, a crew that has built the same configuration hundreds of times improvises less. Confirm your project team is New York based and ask for a recent Con Edison permission-to-operate date.
Momentum Solar
Keeps sales, installation and service under one roof rather than handing your project to a subcontractor after the deposit, and holds NABCEP-certified staff. It ranks here rather than higher on customer experience: the three-year complaint file is heavy and no workmanship term is stated. Make your warranty a written number before you sign.
Trinity Solar
30+ years of permitting experience at one of the largest privately held residential installers in the country. In a city where the Department of Buildings and Con Edison each get a say in your timeline, a company that has run the sequence thousands of times is worth real weeks. Ask directly whether employees or subcontractors will be on your roof, because at this scale the answer varies.
Brooklyn SolarWorks is a new addition to our network, researched for this page and added to the database rather than left off it. For the wider field across the state, see our guide to the best solar companies in New York.
New York City Solar Installers Compared
Installer | Flat-Roof Method | Abatement Filing | Co-op and Condo Work | Watch For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Brooklyn SolarWorks | Patented raised canopy | Core part of the offer | A named service line | Get the warranty term in writing |
Venture Home | Standard racking at volume | Ask who signs the filing | Case by case | Confirm a New York project team |
Momentum Solar | Standard racking, in-house crews | Ask who signs the filing | Case by case | No stated warranty term |
Trinity Solar | Standard racking at volume | Ask who signs the filing | Case by case | Ask who is physically on the roof |
The 30% City Abatement Only Pays If Someone Can File It
New York City runs its own solar incentive on top of the state’s, and it is the largest single number in a city homeowner’s math. The property tax abatement credits 7.5% of your installed system cost against your property tax bill each year for four years, 30% in total, capped at $62,500 a year and $250,000 over the life of the benefit, and it is authorized through January 1, 2035. The catch is procedural rather than financial: the application goes to the Department of Buildings and must be filed by a registered architect or a professional engineer. An installer without one on the team, or without a working relationship with one, is quietly asking you to give up 30%.
The rest of the stack is worth knowing before anyone quotes you:
- New York State’s credit covers 25% of the system cost up to $5,000, claimed on Form IT-255, and unusually it is available on a lease or a power purchase agreement as well as on an owned system. Unused credit carries forward for up to 5 years.
- Con Edison net metering is still 1-to-1 at the retail rate for a standard home, and a system interconnected in 2026 locks that arrangement for 20 years. Exported kilowatt-hours credit your account and unused credits roll forward.
- The Customer Benefit Contribution applies to every residential system interconnected since January 1, 2022, at $0.94 per kilowatt of installed capacity per month. On a 7 kW system that is about $6.58 a month, and it cannot be paid down with solar credits, so it belongs in the projection as a fixed cost.
- The federal residential credit is gone. Section 25D expired December 31, 2025, and any payback built on it is stale.
Then there is the roof itself. Most New York City townhouses have a small flat roof shared with bulkheads, vents and neighbours’ walls, and the FDNY requires clear access paths across it during a fire. A design that ignores those setbacks either shrinks to nothing at plan review or fails inspection after the panels are up. This is the single most common reason a city quote and a city installation do not match.
Abatement, state credit, net metering and the monthly contribution all belong in one number. Enter your ZIP code and see them together.
Add up every New York City incentive you qualify for
Questions to Ask a Solar Installer in New York City
Who signs my property tax abatement filing?
Show me the FDNY access paths on my roof plan.
What is your recent Con Edison interconnection record?
Is my building landmarked, and have you been through that review?
If this is a co-op or condo, who owns the array and who is billed?
Red Flags in a New York City Solar Pitch
How We Rank Solar Companies
Rankings are built from what we can verify, never from who pays us. Five weighted factors:
Frequently Asked Questions
Brooklyn SolarWorks, Venture Home, Momentum Solar and Trinity Solar are the four installers we match with New York City homeowners in 2026: Brooklyn SolarWorks for a Brooklyn base and a flat-roof canopy built for this city’s fire code, Venture Home for volume and a 25-year warranty, Momentum for in-house crews, and Trinity for three decades of permitting experience. Palmetto also serves the five boroughs.
Yes. It credits 7.5% of your installed system cost against your property taxes each year for four years, 30% in total, capped at $62,500 a year and $250,000 overall, and it is authorized through January 1, 2035. The application must be filed with the Department of Buildings by a registered architect or a professional engineer, so confirm who will sign yours before you put down a deposit.
Yes, and it is common enough that some installers run it as a dedicated service line. The complication is not technical: the roof normally belongs to the building rather than to an individual unit, so board approval, ownership of the array and how credits are allocated among apartments all have to be settled in writing before the design is final.
Con Edison serves the five boroughs and runs its own interconnection process. A system interconnected in 2026 locks 1-to-1 retail net metering for 20 years, minus the monthly Customer Benefit Contribution of $0.94 per kilowatt of installed capacity, which cannot be offset with credits.
Before any sales conversation, read what the state adds on top in New York’s incentives, benchmark any bid against New York pricing data, and check the honest payback math in our New York worth-it analysis.
Sources
EcoGen America reviewed New York City property tax abatement rules, New York State tax credit guidance, Con Edison interconnection and net metering resources, NYSERDA Customer Benefit Contribution rate filings, and the installers’ own stated materials for this article. Sources were accessed August 11, 2026, unless another publication, release, effective, or update date is listed below.
- New York City Department of Buildings and NYC Rules. Property tax abatement for installation of a solar electric generating system: 7.5% per year for four years, annual and lifetime caps, filing by a registered architect or professional engineer. Accessed August 11, 2026.
- New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Solar Energy System Equipment Credit, Form IT-255: 25% of cost up to $5,000, five-year carryforward. Accessed August 11, 2026.
- Con Edison. Residential solar interconnection and Phase One net metering for the five boroughs. Accessed August 11, 2026.
- NYSERDA. 2026 utility-published Customer Benefit Contribution rates. Accessed August 11, 2026.
- Brooklyn SolarWorks, Venture Home, Momentum Solar, Trinity Solar. Company-stated service areas, certifications, warranties and methods. Accessed August 11, 2026.
