Nothing Like the Sun

On October 28, Wired ran this bit on NYC’s new solar powered subway station:

“On a sunny day, 60,000 square feet of integrated solar paneling on its roof can generate 210 kilowatts of power, enough to meet two-thirds of the station’s energy requirements. The solar energy doesn’t run the trains, but is expected to contribute approximately 250,000 solar kilowatt hours per year to the station’s other energy needs — primarily lighting and air conditioning in the station and its attached offices and retail stores....

In addition to the Stillwell station, photovoltaic, or PV, cells help power a bus terminal and rail yard in Queens, as well as the Whitehall Ferry Terminal at the southern tip of Manhattan.”

OK, pretty cool. (But are we subsidizing those retail stores? Or are they paying the MTA for the juice?)

And of note is this little factoid:

“Total renovation costs approached $300 million, though it’s not clear how much of that came from expenses related to the solar roof.”

OK, pricey, but these things stick around a while. And of course, there’s the MTA’s $1 billion dollar surplus this year.

But it all puts into further context the MTA’s last minute demand that pushed the union to strike.

From today’s NY Times we learn that in the final minutes before the midnight deadline for negotations, the MTA changed their “final offer”, and pushed a demand to cut the wages of new workers by 4 percent. The plan would have the union win current benefits at the expense of future members (a classic tactic of employers negotiating with unions) and save less than $20 million over three years:

“less over the next three years than what the New York City Police Department will spend on extra overtime during the first two days of the strike.”