Luxury apartment complex Birch House announced the recent activation of a 154-kW rooftop solar system in Jersey City. This eco-friendly addition complements the property’s focus on wellness and luxury living.
Located just 20 minutes outside Manhattan, the property offers residents an oasis of upscale amenities with a reduced environmental footprint. With over 300 panels, the new solar system offsets 30% of Birch House’s energy consumption, primarily powering its communal spaces.
Halpern Real Estate Ventures (HREV), a New York City- and Denver-based real estate investment, operating and advisory firm, acquired the Birch House land in December 2019. Seeing the potential of Jersey City’s West Side neighborhood, HREV wanted to emphasize outdoor green spaces and incorporate innovative sustainability features. That goal was achieved through their partnership with SolarKal, a leading commercial solar advisory and procurement firm and Evergreen Energy, an expert in solar energy solutions.
“We are thrilled to celebrate the completion of this landmark project and to be leading the charge in Jersey City’s westward expansion,” said Joel Halpern, Halpern Real Estate Ventures’ President. “Birch House embodies our commitment to sustainability with innovative features like solar power and on-site composting. We’ve created a vibrant community that aligns with our company goals and appeals to residents.”
SolarKal has worked with HREV since 2016 to mitigate risks and ensure project success. SolarKal analyzed the HREV portfolio, assessed utility bills, designed preliminary photovoltaic systems, and modeled returns, ultimately choosing Birch House as a top property for solar development. SolarKal’s proprietary procurement process then identified Evergreen Energy as the preferred solar provider given the firm’s strong local area expertise.
“The solar project was exciting and incredibly dynamic,” said Jacob Sussman, COO of Evergreen Energy. “We thoroughly enjoyed partnering with SolarKal to develop and install the solar facility for Halpern Ventures on the rooftop of their iconic building in Jersey City.”
Birch House consists of 337 residential units and features a directly owned solar system.
News item from Halpern Real Estate Ventures
Right here on this thread in 2019 there was an article for an apartment complex in Utah, Soleil Lofts, that was constructed with solar PV on every apartment building roof and a Sonnen BESS in every apartment in the complex. This seems to be catching on in other apartment complexes and housing tracts, there was also a tract home development in Texas that was to have solar PV and BESS in each home. In Arizona since right around 2019 developer Mandalay homes has been putting solar PV and Sonnen BESS units in the homes in the housing tracts they build. It has been reported the Mandalay tract in Cottonwood Arizona when built out will have an aggregate Energy storage of 10MWh.
The thing I’m not seeing here, is this Birch House project isn’t mentioning commercial BESS unit(s) for use as day time solar PV energy storage and night time arbitrage using the BESS to actually be capable of reducing the electric bills in the complex up to around 50% with proper programming. Aside from California, New Jersey and New York is mentioned more often in news feeds about solar PV and alternative energy projects. The proof that large BESS units using stored excess energy during the day and allow stored after hours enegy use to regulate TOU rate spiking periods and enable the BESS to be used as a stacked revenue stream doing arbitrage energy storage from the grid and grid services to the local utility during high peak demands.