The state is giving the solar sector more time to figure out how to overhaul the current system of financing the installation of solar arrays on homes and businesses, a program widely criticized as too costly.Despite ranking as one of the most successful solar programs in the nation — more than 100,000 solar arrays have been installed in New Jersey — it has long been faulted as too expensive to utility ratepayers who subsidize it. The sector employs more than 7,000 people in the state, with an investment topping $10 billion.Worried that rising costs of solar would hinder development of other clean-energy technologies, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill last spring to scrap the current system for financing solar and place a cap on future expenses to ratepayers. Over the past decade, those costs have exceeded $2.8 billion and continue to rise.

Curbing costs

Reining in those costs without disrupting the state’s most robust renewable energy program, however, is proving difficult. State officials are hoping to redesign the program in three phases.In a straw proposal, or draft plan, issued by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities over the holidays, the state gave the industry general principles and guidelines on how it will shut down the existing program, transition to an interim system, and eventually move to an entirely new way of promoting solar energy.The proposal leaves many key details of the process unanswered, but generally won endorsement from representatives of the state’s thriving solar sector. New Jersey ranks fifth in the nation for the number of solar installations, according to one recent ranking.The law left it up to the BPU to hammer out when the existing program will end and how the new system will work. Those details have yet to be determined, but the proposal issued last month establishes a framework that gives state officials and industry stakeholders more time to come up with a new interim program and successor program.Read the full storyLike this? Click to receive free updates