by Robert Lynch; August 15, 2025
Enfield solar installer Rebekah Carpenter stated the obvious: “This is a bummer.”
At One AM on Sunday morning, August third, thieves drove their big pickup to behind the Enfield Town Hall. They latched on to an open flatbed trailer loaded with solar panels, and drove it off. Carpenter’s company, Fingerlakes Renewables, owned that trailer and those panels. Some were soon slated for deployment atop the Town Hall under a state-granted project. The trailer was found abandoned several days later in Alpine. The panels were gone. They still are.
Yet despite that theft, Fingerlakes Renewables’ solar installation atop the Town Hall, Enfield’s largely-vacated former highway garage, is nearly done. As of Friday, August 15, Carpenter said all that essentially remains is an electrical inspection and then connecting the array to the power company’s grid.
“We already bought the panels and put them up,” Carpenter informed this writer just before Noon on Friday. She said work may take “another day or so on the roof,” as the replacement panels’ mountings “fit us a little bit different.”
The fact that a trailer load of solar panels got stolen at the Enfield work site took a while to reach public attention. Carpenter first wrote about it in a Facebook post Saturday, August 9. Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond informed Town Board members at the board’s August 13 meeting by reading Carpenter’s post to them.
“Hey folks- about a week ago someone stole four pallets worth of solar panels (144 panels in total) from my trailer parked in Enfield,” Carpenter had posted. “They abandoned the trailer so I have that back, but the panels were worth significantly more than the trailer,” Carpenter continued.
Contacted Friday, Rebekah Carpenter declined to state publicly the estimated value of the stolen panels taken. She admitted their value was not covered by insurance.
“I’m essentially a solo business owner so this isn’t corporate thievery; they just took a huge amount of money from a business that doesn’t make a huge amount of money,” Carpenter’s August 9 posting lamented.
Asked why the theft had not delayed the Enfield project, Carpenter explained that after having learned of the disappearance, she’d notified her supplier and was overnighted replacement panels. As her firm did not purchase Chinese-made panels, Carpenter explained that tariff-related or supply-chain issues did not impact her reorder.
Brian Jolly, an investigator with the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office, reported Friday that his department’s investigation into the Enfield solar panel theft is continuing. Jolly said that contents of Carpenter’s social media posting did not compromise the department’s investigation and that her comments could be shared more widely. (Need for that assurance delayed reporting this story.)
Having just learned of the theft and unaware of how widely knowledge of it had circulated, this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, had requested a closed, executive session of the Enfield Town Board August 13 to discuss the matter, to share among board members any confidential law enforcement information that might exist, and to explore the theft’s financial implications for the Town. Supervisor Stephanie Redmond declined the executive session request.
“It’s all over Facebook, everybody knows” Redmond replied dismissively and with a lighthearted voice.
“We have had an issue,” a more subdued Redmond acknowledged as she returned to the topic later in the meeting. The Supervisor then read Carpenter’s August 9 Facebook post.
At its March meeting earlier this year, the Enfield Town Board awarded Fingerlakes Renewables the contract to install the Town Hall rooftop solar, the company’s $70,248 offer determined to be the “best value” among five competing bids submitted. Fingerlakes Renewables, coincidentally, was the only Tompkins County-based firm to bid.
A New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (“NYSERDA”) Clean Energy Communities grant covered most of the contract expense. Though bids came in slightly over the Town’s initial $65,000 budget, the Town Board decided to proceed with the project given the expected long-term energy savings.
As Carpenter recalls, the flatbed carrying the panels arrived at the Enfield Town Hall site on the Friday before the overnight weekend theft. Weather conditions delayed installation, so Carpenter remained unaware of the flatbed’s unauthorized removal until the following Wednesday, August 6. That’s when Schuyler County authorities notified her of the empty trailer’s abandonment in Alpine.
“It was so out of view,” Carpenter remarked as to the trailer’s concealment behind the long, concrete block former highway garage. “I didn’t tell people they were back there,” the business owner insisted.
Reportedly, an Enfield Volunteer Fire Company surveillance camera from a considerable distance away caught the best view of the Sunday morning theft. Another camera, mounted upon the Enfield Town Hall, may have caught a glimpse of the incident as well. But Town Board members were told Wednesday that the Town Hall camera and alarm system is old and outdated and did a poor job with identification. The Town Board that night voted to spend just over $1,300 to upgrade the alarm system and buy another camera.
According to Carpenter’s Facebook posting, the vehicle that hitched onto the trailer was a dark gray Toyota Tacoma extended cab pickup, maybe 2009-2011 vintage.
Presumably to avoid theft, the panel-laden trailer could have been parked inside one of the locked, largely-unused highway equipment bays inside the Town Hall building. Why wasn’t that space used?
“We could have,” Carpenter answered with a sigh of regret peppered with an ample shake of 20/20 hindsight.
“The most frustrating thing is there’s no use for these solar panels by anyone,” Carpenter explained. There’s no real salvage price, she claimed. “And you have to know what you’re doing to install solar panels,” she added. It takes professional installers. And the “inverters,” the electrical devices that interface the panels and the grid, were secured that night at Carpenter’s house.
It’s really an “impractical stack of stuff,” Carpenter said of what she suspects now sits in somebody’s storage shed . Solar contractors won’t touch them, she maintained, as they’d suspect they’re “hot” merchandise. The only potential purchaser could be the occasional homeowner prospect.
Of the 144 solar panels purloined from behind the old Enfield highway barn, only 62 were destined for the Town Hall project. The remaining 82, the contractor said, were intended for “three other jobs.”
“I’m not counting on getting them back, it’s a big loss” Rebekah Carpenter acknowledged. But she’s taking the theft in stride. “Worse things happen to people,” Carpenter reasoned.
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