Brooklyn SolarWorks, a photovoltaic contractor headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, sees the potential to install solar canopies in a city where rooftop gathering spaces far outnumber lawns. New York City fire regulations require a 6-foot clear passage from front to back and from side to side on residential buildings for firefighters to access; roof obstacles such as hatches and ventilation pipes significantly reduce the potential size of solar projects installed on rooftops.

Gaelen McKee, President and Co-founder of SolarWorks in Brooklyn, said, "We knew that if [the canopy] was 9 feet tall, it should meet the fire code requirements. "We collaborated with the design studio and engineers to finalize the concept, then handed it over to the manufacturer and produced a prototype."

The company has iterated on its first solar canopy, making it lighter and faster to install, yet still capable of withstanding the harsh weather conditions of New York City rooftops. Brooklyn SolarWorks is manufacturing aluminum canopy structures for its own projects, but other contractors across the country also want to build these arrays. Therefore, Brooklyn SolarWorks has begun distributing them under the name Brooklyn Solar Canopy Co.

"In the end, the situation was reversed, and we actually sold more canopies to third parties than we used ourselves," said McKee.

Brooklyn Solar Canopy produces four different types of canopies and garages. Its Type A frame and column truss structure can be installed on the ground or on the roof.

The A-frame utilizes paired triangular supports connected at the top to the truss, with guide rails securing the solar panels. The rear truss employs upright columns as its foundation, with support trusses extending along the exterior and between the columns, topped with module guide rails.

The canopy assembly can be lifted, and if there is sufficient space in the stairwell, it can also be manually transported to the roof.

Installing a solar canopy requires reviewing the architectural blueprints to determine the dimensions of the rafters beneath the roof surface, their spacing, and the materials used. The base rails on the posts are parallel to the top of the masonry/parapet or other roof surface, so that the square-head bolts can be driven vertically into the rafters (usually made of wood). The connection points should be distributed across different rafters to achieve proper load distribution.

"Therefore, all the point loads are not on the masonry walls, but on the wood inside the brick walls," said McKee. "We sometimes install these structures on actual parapets, but because this is New York and its buildings are 150 to 200 years old, many bricks have already deteriorated considerably. You can better fix them on the wood, simply because bricks can be very fragile and uneven."

In new building projects where fresh concrete is poured, the canopy can be directly bolted to the concrete wall. Solar States, a residential and commercial photovoltaic contractor based in Philadelphia, has made solar canopy projects a regular part of its output, with many elevated arrays installed on newly constructed or renovated homes.

Many Philadelphians add sunshade structures to their towns or row houses with roof access - locally known as "roof decks". The Solar Energy State hopes to introduce solar canopies as an option for Philadelphia's roof decks, but the city initially considered them as "unknown uses". They are not traditional rooftop solar or canopies. They are considered auxiliary structures, and each project requires separate zoning differences.

"If you look around Philadelphia, you'll see a lot of people going to Home Depot to buy backyard patios or gazebos and throwing them on the roof. That's not allowed," said Jared Pashko, Director of Sales and Marketing at Solar States. "We need to do everything that's allowed, and in order to get permission, it needs to be structurally stamped."

The company successfully advocated for a piece of legislation that codifies solar canopies on urban rooftops. Each city has its own unique characteristics regarding such solar projects.

When constructing the solar canopy in Philadelphia, Solar Nation did not cover the entire roof. Due to obstacles such as roof stairwell enclosures, these 5 to 8 kW arrays typically occupy about one-third of the space.

Compared to traditional rooftop solar projects, solar canopies require more materials to build. However, Pashko stated that their cost is comparable to constructing non-photovoltaic shading structures on the roof. The difference lies in the fact that these structures not only increase the property value of the house and save energy costs but also provide more living space for the family.

"I think it's great to be able to provide this service to homeowners. Besides, for solar contractors, it opens up a new market segment for us," he said. "It's really great that we can install high-profit projects requested by customers without fierce competition. It provides us with more disposable resources to deploy solar energy and transition to a sustainable economy."