Aug 5 2010
Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) today marked the start of construction of the Trenton Solar Farm on Brunswick Avenue. The Trenton facility will be one of four ground-mounted solar farms the company is developing as part of the Solar 4 All™ Program.
Through the program, PSE&G expects to develop more than 20 solar projects this year, which represents an investment of more than $140 million that will create almost 300 jobs and provide New Jersey with 30 megawatts of solar generated power.
"The Trenton Solar Farm exemplifies PSE&G's environmental commitment and its leadership position in renewable energy," said Al Matos, PSE&G's Vice President of Renewables and Energy Solutions. "We are giving new life to a once contaminated site. By reclaiming it we are helping to improve the neighborhood and provide New Jersey's capital city with a productive and beneficial asset.
"This is one of many projects PSE&G is developing as we invest more than $750 million to increase access to solar energy in New Jersey. Clean energy investments are key to a sustainable future. In addition to being good for the environment, these investments are creating jobs and help New Jersey to build a new, green sector that will strengthen the skills of the workforce and our state's ability to compete globally."
The Trenton Solar Farm will be comprised of 5,496 solar panels covering 5.5 acres of PSE&G property and connected directly to the grid. The farm will produce enough electricity to keep the lights on and the air conditioning running in about 207 homes.
PSE&G is developing the solar farms on PSE&G owned properties in Hamilton (4.4 megawatts), Linden (3.2 megawatts) and Edison (2 megawatts). Each will be among the largest solar farms developed in New Jersey, with the Hamilton project being the largest in the state and the Linden project the second largest. All four sites will utilize crystalline solar panel technology and have monitoring and communications functionality.
The 20 projects under development will produce enough energy to power about 4,900 homes and eliminate 23,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions -- the equivalent of removing nearly 2,800 cars from the road for one year.
PSE&G is using leading solar energy companies to help deploy solar farms across the state to help drive NJ's economic growth in this sector. SunEdison, a global leader in solar energy services, is responsible for the deployment of the Trenton project.
State regulators approved PSE&G's Solar 4 All program last July. The program involves a total of $515 million investment in 80 megawatts of solar, creating green jobs and nearly doubling the size of New Jersey's installed solar capacity. The program's first segment consists of installing up to 40MW of pole-attached smart solar units in neighborhoods on utility poles in PSE&G's service territory, which includes the state's six largest cities and roughly 300 rural and suburban communities. This is the largest pole-attached solar installation in the world, with the smart solar units connected directly into PSE&G's electric distribution system.
The second segment of the Solar 4 All program focuses on 40MW of centralized solar facilities such as Silver Lake and other solar sites on PSE&G owned or leased properties.
Source: http://www.pseg.com/