Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) says it has invested more than $1 billion over the last seven years in solar technology. The energy company, whose operating subsidiaries include Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G), PSEG Power and PSEG Long Island, notes that it has dedicated the largest part of this investment to develop or help finance solar installations in New Jersey.
In a blog, Ralph Izzo, chairman, president of CEO of PSEG, says, “Our efforts are playing an important role in helping the Garden State achieve its renewable energy goals – benefiting all of our customers, creating jobs and growing a new industry. PSEG is also active in developing solar energy facilities across the country: We’ve expanded our solar portfolio to 12 states.”
He adds, “Traditionally, people haven’t thought of us as a solar company, but to a growing extent, we are and proud to be. There isn’t a cleaner or more inexhaustible power resource than the sun.”
However, Izzo emphasizes that solar technology “still has a way to go to be fully cost competitive.”
“While the sun’s energy is free, converting it into electricity is not,” he writes. Izzo also claims that utility-scale community solar projects, which the company has been focusing on and building, “offer a number of significant advantages for our customers at all income levels.”
Because the company’s solar projects are grid connected, they “feed clean energy to all of our customers, including many who live in houses or apartment buildings where it isn’t practical to install solar.”
He also says economies of scale allow the company to offer solar power that is 40% to 50% cheaper than “what is commonly the case with rooftop solar.”
The full blog, entitled “Putting Our Money on Solar,” is available at energizepseg.com.
Photo courtesy of PSEG: PSE&G’s L&D Solar Farm covers 53 acres of landfill space spanning the towns of Eastampton, Lumberton and Mount Holly, N.J.
