New Jersey Solar Miracle (and implications for other states)

thank you governor christie.

 

Two interesting NJ solar tidbits:

1: I wanted to install solar on the house about 8 years ago. However, and especially when cells were more expensive than they are now, I was denied any NJ subsidies because my town just happened to have municipal power instead of investor-owned utility power. Our electricity was a tiny bit cheaper, perhaps by a tenth of a cent per kWh. But because of that, there was no subsidy pool. Oh well.

2: Now the utilities seem to be in the biz. In Little Ferry, the most carefully pronounced town in the state, there are 250W panels and microinverters on most of the utility poles. A few years ago I tried to find out who made them and whether I could buy any, but the utility (PSEG) was silent and I eventually gave up. That may answer the Q about NJ forcing it down the utilities throat. They seem to be in favor of it.

One interesting Arizona solar tidbit:

Is it ever sunny here! Just finished up a 17kW rooftop installation. My APS bill will plummet and may even go negative for the year!

Richard

 

jealous. weather and pv's. 43 here, rainy and blowing a gail. i should have a windmill.

 

Electricity is ~$0.17/kWh from PSE&G (part of PEG). PEG is installing solar arrays on a couple of closed landfills. There is a large array in East Windsor and several others that I've seen covering open fields. Wyndham is using solar panels to cover some parking spaces and chargers at their hotel in Mt. Laurel. I'm sure there are others that I haven't seen or haven't noticed.

Lincoln Field in Philadelphia also has solar panels over a portion of one of their parking lots.

My guess is that it is these commercial ventures that are driving the growth in solar power generation. I'm sure some of it is driven by subsidies and tax credits and some by economics. Utilities, in general, are starting to realize that there is money to be made through solar power. They will be creating solar divisions outside of the regulated utility for this business.

If the solar array is tied to a large plant then I believe all of the electricity is displacing electricity purchased from the utility. The company is getting cheaper electricity and may not be subject to as many brown outs in the summer.

The next fight is going to be over what those transmission lines and support are worth to those generating their own electricity.

 

How do you know that wattage of the panels ?

I suspect that those are there to power a tiny transmitter that triggers a signal when the AC power fails.
If they were actually tied into the lines and actively feeding power, it would be a significant safety hazard for the line crews, I think.

They don't need one on every pole but a few strategically placed would give them an almost instant plot of where the fault is when an outage occurs.

 

They are on every pole in some stretches in NJ, and are about a meter square or so.

 

Well there is a lot of "stuff" running along that stretch of poles in the picture; phone wires, cable TV, fiber optic, ????

I somehow doubt that the panel shown has anything to do with actual AC power service.

 

The panels were put on the poles by PSE&G.

 

PSE&G Neighborhood Solar

 

Yes, and the poles to either side will also have a panel, and then the ones further on, and so on. Far too many for powering monitoring equipment, or anything but power generation for the grid.

 

Yep, the panels are all over the place. There's also a lot of guys walking around here with leases for solar power. Some people got a real surprise when the power went out in the neighborhood and they thought theirs would still be on.

 

Thank you for rooting out some real facts.
I still wonder about the safety factor though.
Maybe they automatically shut down if the main power feed is off.

 

If not PSE&G, then JCP&L, and there aren't too many fans for that bunch.

 

If those panels are providing power into the grid they need to have a microinverter on each panel. The microinverters will have circuitry to cut the power (back-feed) if there is a grid power failure. My home panels have that and the law is that they need to shut off within 10ms (or something close to that) of a power failure.

 

Does anyone have better information than this
Solar Industry Data | SEIA
This has Massachusetts and New Mexico ahead of New Jersey for cumulative solar installed
2013 Top 10 Solar States | SEIA
This has Arizona, North Carolina, and Massachusetts ahead of New Jersey in amount added last year.

New Jersey unlike California does not have good wind available so it definietly needs more solar to have a good percentage of solar. Massachusetts seems to lead and is building off shore wind as well as building solar the fastest in the north east.