PSE&G rate payer subsidies for solar energy hits home
September 9,2012
the staff of theRidgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ ,A month ago when Governor Chris Christie signed into law S1925/A2966. This law directs the electric utilities in the state like PSE&G to increase the amount of electricity they supply to their customers from solar panel generation. By signing this law the Governor basically created a solar subsidy.
Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) runs a program known as Solar 4 AllTM Program. This is the program that gave the state those controversial telephone pole solar panels that have been so hotly debated on this blog .PSE&G also uses this program to fund solar panel farms
which the Governor spoke at a groundbreaking event celebrating the start of construction at the PSE&G Solar Farm in Hackensack, July of this year.
Like may of you I’ve been waiting for the punch line and wondering ,sounds great but how is PSE&G going to fund more projects like these? The answer it seems is a simple one PSE&G simply asked for rate increases from the Board of Public Utilities (BPU).
In the rate increase announcement, PSE&G emphasized, like the Governor did before that the jobs that this $800 million plus rate increase would create.According to the company the number of jobs is 300 which translates into each job costing $2,943,333.00 to create.That still better than n the first phase of Solar 4 All, when the company spent about $550 million and created 175 jobs.at $3,142,857.00 per job.( www.https://conservativenewjersey.com)
Screwing the rate payer in New Jersey is hardly a news worthy item now a days but the best part is that other politicians will also be paying the price. Many local elected officials have come to realized that any increase in utility rates will affect town budgets with the 2% cap on budgets, the increases could further pressure many towns and municipalities.
Westwood Mayor John Birkner: “We’ve got a serious mandate to maintain our budgets, and unfortunately increases coming from utilities are over 2 percent,” Birkner said.
From the town council in Glen Rock: “The Borough of Glen Rock finds it disingenuous that now PSE&G will raise the rates of its residents to subsidize the cost of installing those same solar panels that are supposed to, by their own admission, bring monetized value to their customers,” the resolution reads.
The Borough of Hillsdale had this to say: WHEREAS, the Borough of Hillsdale finds it abhorrent that PSE&G is expecting its residential customers to finance a loan program for its business customers;
North Arlington weighs in with this: If it’s true that the rate increase is due to the solar panel programs, the initial pitch for Solar 4 All as being a cost-saving measure was misleading, North Arlington officials claimed.
And from Fair Lawn this one comes from a councilwoman who isn’t the brightest blub on the string: “I just feel as much as I support solar energy,” said Councilwoman Lisa Swain at the council work session on Aug. 14, “taxpayers should not pay.” (https://conservativenewjersey.com)
So are some elected officials actually waking up and realizing just what a farce these programs are? One would hope so but could other forces be at work against the small town politicians.
sources: https://conservativenewjersey.com , https://www.pseg.com/info/media/index.jsp
most A- Hole politicians in New Jersey deserve what they get lol
Who votes in the “A-Hole” politicians ?
They deserve the credit as well…