In New Jersey, there has been a Solar Energy Advancement & Fair Competition Act enacted which will be establishing a sixteen year old solar renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS). This new standard of renewable energy requires that New Jersey generates a portion of their total electricity generated, from solar energy. According to this solar RPS, power suppliers & basic service providers together need to be able to at least provide 300 GWh of solar powered electricity in it’s first year, i.e., June ’10 to May ’11. This requirement is going to be increasing every year right up to 2026 when solar RPS is supposed to be generating close to 5,500 GWh of solar power.

This new legislation says that the New Jersey Public Utilities Board is to allocate each and every electrical power supplie & basic service provider in their state with an amount pro rata to total solar RPS Gwh requirement. This law also requires solar RPS regulations which are adopted by BPU to be in place for not more than thirty months after which they have to be amended or re-adopted so that they are in accordance with the procedures of BPU. These mentioned thresholds are the minimum that has been asked for from the solar RPS. Even though the BPU has to initially adopt schedules which are designed only for meeting these minimum needs, the BPU can also choose to increase the minimum GWh levels that are asked of from the solar RPS and also from the more traditional RPS’s, Class I & Class II.

This new law also ensures that solar RPS level for every year will be increasing automatically by 20% for the entire sixteen year period as long as the number of SREC’s that are generated meet or exceed the original target that was set for a minimum of 3 consecutive years as well as the average price for every SREC that is bought by entities under solar RPS obligations keeps on falling for this same period. This legislations also has a grandfather clause which will exempt all agreements related to power generation that were signed before the legislation from having to produce higher solar RPS levels. This legislation also says that any added requirements are going to be distributed among suppliers and distributors who are not bound by the supply contract exemptions uptil the time their contracts expire and all suppliers and providers are bound by the new solar RPS requirements.

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