New Jersey has the distinction of being second only to California in the United States in terms of solar capacity installed within the state borders. The Garden State has been able to realize this accomplishment through a unique combination of progressive state government public-policy decisions and a strong willingness on the part of its citizens and businesses to commit to carbon-free electric generation.

As New Jersey's largest utility, Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G) has a 107-year history of providing safe, reliable power to more than 2.1 million electric customers. The utility played a key role in building New Jersey's electric infrastructure and implemented the Solar 4 All program, which includes the first pole-attached solar panel initiative in the world. By installing 80 MW DC of solar capacity by 2013, and tying it all into the power grid, PSE&G is helping to vastly increase the carbon-free electric production available in New Jersey.

The brilliance of the US$515 million Solar 4 All investment program is in the creative use of assets PSE&G already owns and the leveraging of its existing relationships to find the space needed to install hundreds of thousands of solar panels. As such, Solar 4 All is not just a dry engineering exercise; instead, the program provides imaginative answers to the problem of installing a large amount of solar capacity in the nation's most densely populated state.

Solar 4 All

The Solar 4 All program has two main initiatives:

• 40 MW in “neighborhood” solar (for example, pole-attached solar panels)
• 40 MW of “centralized” solar (in other words, large-scale installations).

By dividing the program into these two broad categories, PSE&G was able to creatively take advantage of some untapped resources — space on utility poles, acres of open land the utility owns, and some of the millions and millions of square feet of flat-top roofs in the state, including locations in urban enterprise zones.

By installing solar panels on poles, building solar farms and leasing space on rooftops — and then tying the solar generation into the overall power grid — PSE&G was able to unlock solar's potential and deliver its numerous benefits to the utility's electric customers and New Jersey as a whole. Since the power generated through Solar 4 All flows directly into the power grid, it is immediately available to all PSE&G electric customers.

In addition, the financial benefits Solar 4 All realizes — federal tax investment credits, the sale of the energy and capacity, and monetizing the solar environmental credits (SRECs) — are returned to the ratepayers to offset the overall cost of the initiative, thus keeping rates low. The net effect to ratepayers is currently about $0.10/month for an average residential customer in the first year of construction, rising to $0.30/month at the height of construction and then falling again.

Neighborhood Solar

Through the pole-attached solar panel initiative, PSE&G will install up to 200,000 smart solar units on utility poles in more than 300 towns and cities in its service territory. By collaborating with Petra Solar, the manufacturer of these units, PSE&G has been able to take advantage of the approximately 800,000 utility poles in its service territory, about 25% of which offer the southern exposure and clear site lines needed to install the pole-attached panels and connect directly into the secondary grid, with smart communications included.

To date, more than 60,000 panels are installed in dozens of towns in PSE&G's 2600-sq mile (6734-sq km) service territory. Thirty-five crews from outside contractor Riggs Distler are putting up the panels at a rate of about 1200 per week.

While helping New Jersey meet its clean energy goals, the pole-attached portion of Solar 4 All also is creating good jobs, with Petra Solar hiring about 125 new employees and approximately 75 workers installing the panels through Riggs Distler. This number does not count the myriad of other ancillary hiring PSE&G believes the program has spurred.

Centralized Solar

For the centralized solar segment of Solar 4 All, PSE&G is at work building four solar farms with 11 MW of total capacity, building two additional large-scale solar energy systems and negotiating lease arrangements with third parties to install solar energy systems tied into the electric grid.

The four solar farms are in various stages of construction on PSE&G-owned properties in four New Jersey towns: Linden (3.2 MW), Edison (2 MW) Trenton (1.3MW) and Hamilton (4.4MW). Three of these projects, Linden, Trenton and Edison, are located on PSE&G sites that are former brownfields. These locations sat idle for years until they were remediated and fitted with thousands of solar panels. PSE&G also is installing a total of 1.8 MW of solar capacity in both rooftop and carport configurations at two of its larger facilities in Somerset and Edison. When all six of these sites are up and running in 2010, they will provide about 12.8 MW of electricity.

PSE&G also allocated 15 MW under Solar 4 All to install solar on third-party locations where the utility pays for use of the site to install solar panels that are tied directly into the grid. This section helps make what was once unproductive real estate into usable property to generate solar power.

PSE&G signed a lease agreement with Newark Public Schools to install solar systems at its Central High School, Barringer High School, Camden Elementary School, Camden Middle School and Park Elementary School. These systems will be operational by the end of 2010. As part of the lease agreement, PSE&G and Newark Public Schools also are developing a green energy training curriculum for city students. This program will help ensure that participating students have the knowledge and training needed to take advantage of job opportunities in the green energy industry.

All told, there are 14 projects with third-party sites in various stages of negotiation, development and construction.