City Merchandise, New York’s largest and one of the nation’s most comprehensive souvenir distributors, recently installed a rooftop-mounted 68.4-kilowatt system on its Sunset Park (Brooklyn) building.

For City Merchandise, which distributes memorabilia for over 35 U.S. cities, the installation represents an opportunity to go “zero-energy”; that is, the solar system provides all of City Merchandise’s electricity needs now and well into the next quarter century. In addition, the 68.4-kilowatt system is now Brooklyn’s largest commercial solar electricity system. The second-largest (and the nation’s largest net-metered solar installation) is a 40-kilowatt system at Big Sue LLC at 925 Bergen Street.

The system was funded in part by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, an organization funded by the state’s utility ratepayers. NYSERDA operates New York Energy Smart, or Power Naturally, which is the operational arm for promoting and developing environmental initiatives like energy efficiency and renewable energy.

NYSERDA’s contribution to the City Merchandise solar installation was $252,880 – a project NYSERDA President and CEO Francis J. Murray Jr. has called “a fine example” of what the state is trying to achieve under Governor David A. Paterson’s stated “45 by 15” goal. That is, 45 percent of the state’s energy needs provided by alternative energy by 2015.

New York’s renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, calls for 25 percent of all energy coming from renewable sources by 2013. This RPS was instituted by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) on February 19, 2003, at the request of Gov. Paterson, and put into effect on September 24, 2004, raising the portion of renewables from its 2004 baseline of 19.3 percent to the 25-percent goal in four years.

Though most of the state’s RPS is funded by utility rate increases, one percent also comes from voluntary renewable energy purchases made by customers, through Renewable Energy Certificates, or RECs. These help promote the continuing development of renewable energy sources like solar by providing a “financial backbone” for developers.

City Merchandise’s solar system was installed by Brooklyn-based Solar Energy Systems, LLC (SES), the firm which also installed the Big Sue solar photovoltaic system in January. SES is solar installer/integrator whose largest project, to date, is a 341.6-kilowatt system at Milford, Connecticut-based Pilgrim Furniture.

In 2008, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, or IREC, ranked New York sixth in installed, grid-tied solar photovoltaic capacity with 22 megawatts of solar energy.