Solar Goes Mainstream (Media)

The media likes 'new' news, tangible news with money or jobs involved, news with a twist, and of course, bad news with a long shelf-life. Firsts are big. When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the new target for solar capacity was now 1,000 MW by 2030, he also declared not only a first for NYC, but the first for any city in America-100 MWh of storage by 2020 - it got some attention. Over a dozen industry outlets like Power Magazine and NRDC captured the news and then the New York Times came out with a story a few weeks later, it even made the front page (of the Sunday Real Estate section) - however they had been working on the story for months. In fact the reporter had attended the NY Solar Summit in June as well as the NYC Solar Partnership Shared Solar NYC and Solarize NYC kick-off in early September. Other outlets like DNAInfo, PlanetSave and PVTech covered details of how the targets could be achieved. It seems 'good' solar news is selling. Have a story you would like to share? Contact nysolar@cuny.edu