On May 31 of this year, Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) company outlined the benefits of their solar programs for the Board of Public Utilities. They recently visited the BPU stakeholder proceedings with a formal statement from Al Matos, Vice President of Renewable Energy Solutions for PSE&G.

“Through both the Solar 4 All and Solar Loan programs, PSE&G has helped New Jersey create jobs, support economic development, and support solar development in hard-to-reach market sectors,” said Matos. “As of today, PSE&G’s Solar 4 All program has hired 18 firms to develop and build solar facilities. The many engineers, laborers from union halls, and other professionals employed in this process represent the addition of over 600 jobs since Solar 4 All was approved. Add to that another 400 jobs that have been supported by the solar developed through the Solar Loan program.”

The solar programs were approved by the BPU with the intent of establishing the market with the least cost to ratepayers. PSE&G would like to continue with the understanding that they do not support further long-tern energy contracting obligations.

“While PSE&G’s approach is innovative and highly successful, we do recognize that the state’s other EDCs submitted to the Long Term Contracting of SRECs as ordered by the BPU,” said Matos. “As articulated in prior discussion, PSE&G remains strongly opposed to implementing Long Term Contracting for SRECs.”

PSE&G’s position is the utility-based programs were executed as agreed and highly successful. They didn’t involve a high level of risk that would eventually be passed along to ratepayers.

“In our Solar 4 All program, all value from the sale of the electricity produced and capacity sold to PJM is returned to ratepayers,” said Matos. “Likewise, the full value of SRECs and tax credits generated through these programs is returned to ratepayers, thus minimizing the total cost to ratepayers to build solar. In our solar loan program, I believe we have demonstrated a track record of delivering programs that brought solar capacity on line when it was needed most at a lower cost than other utility programs.”

Solar 4 All has brought 15 solar facilities online and installed over 110,000 solar units on poles since August 2009. The Solar Loan program is credited with 430 projects, 370 of which are residential.

Other Energy Distribution Companies are not in agreement with PSE&G’s position on continuing utility-based financing programs.