New Jersey Going Even Greener

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has approved the construction of three out of 59 vital sewer system and drinking water infrastructure projects for the tri-county area made possible by the state’s $840 million package of federal and state aid.

The first so far approved is Mount Laurel's Municipal Utility Authority, which is ready to initiate the bidding process on an estimated $5.3-million project that will put solar panels on the township’s main wastewater pumping station and drinking water well off Ramblewood Parkway.

Because the project will be bonded with federal stimulus money, half the loan doesn’t need to be repaid. The other half, borrowed at a low-market rate of 1.2 percent over 20 years (the most recent quote) through the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust, means that the loan will virtually pay for itself in terms of energy savings over the course of the next eight years.

An additional $300,000 a year in RECs (renewable energy credits), sold to electricity supplier Public Service Enterprise Group to meet its state-mandated renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of 22.5 percent by 2021 (2.12 percent of that strictly from solar), will be the icing on the cake.

Power for the wastewater treatment station, which handles 20 percent of the municipality’s wastewater, and the well – which provides about 15 percent of the drinking water – will be provided via a system of ground mounted solar panels delivering 529 kilowatts whose installation will save the community about $90,000 in electricity costs.

According to Mount Laurel's Municipal Utility Authority (MUA) Executive Director Pam Carolan, the use of the solar panels to provide electricity means that, over a year, the amount of electricity purchased from Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) will be zero.

The MUA will advertise for bids in the near future, and award a contract in September. Project design completion is slated for the end of October, or early November, with construction to begin in November or December. The panels will be delivering electricity by the summer of 2010.

Area residents whose homes back up against the proposed solar panel site are largely in support of the project, according to Carolan.

The project is only one of many in the works, as other municipalities and towns like Camden, Camden County, Deptford and Bordentown City consider their own sewer system and drinking water projects for solar upgrades.

Add that that PSE&G’s recent initiative to install solar power units on 200,000 utility poles in PSE&G's service territory, which includes New Jersey’s six largest cities and roughly 300 rural and suburban communities – a project being billed as the largest pole-attached solar installation in the world – and you have a major case of greening that extends beyond the state’s reputation for truck farms delivering produce to Pennsylvania to the west and New York to the north.

The individual solar units, manufactured by New Jersey-based Petra Solar, will be connected directly to the utility’s electric distribution system and the power generated sold directly into the PJM Interconnection.

PJM is a regional electrical transmission organization (RTO) that regulates and coordinates the flow of electricity from power plants to members (like PSE&G) and their 22 million subscribers in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

re-posted from http://solar.coolerplanet.com