PSE&G New Jersey solar in 2026: rates, credits, and risk

Newark and Jersey City fit. JCP&L and Atlantic City Electric towns do not.

The utility behind this guide is Public Service Electric and Gas Company, headquartered at 80 Park Plaza in Newark. PSE&G's Electric Service Area roster covers 13 counties: Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, and Union. Newark appears under Essex County and Jersey City under Hudson County, and the same roster lists Paterson, Elizabeth, Trenton, Camden, Clifton, New Brunswick, Bayonne, Hoboken, Edison, Woodbridge, and Princeton among the electric-served municipalities.

Two cautions. First, PSE&G publishes a separate gas roster on the same page that includes counties such as Hunterdon and Ocean where it does not appear on the electric list. Gas service does not mean electric service. Second, do not drag this rulebook into other companies' territory. Jersey Central Power and Light serves northern, western, and east central New Jersey with 1.1 million customers, and Atlantic City Electric serves 547,000 customers across 2,700 square miles of southern New Jersey, per the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel. EIA also lists Rockland Electric (63,679 residential customers) and the municipal City of Vineland (22,774) as separate New Jersey providers.

Sources: PSE&G service territory page; Rate Counsel on JCP&L; Rate Counsel on Atlantic City Electric; and EIA Table 6, 2024.

Retail credits all year, a wholesale price at the true-up

New Jersey's rule is unusually clean. N.J.A.C. 14:8-4.3(l) requires net metering at rates identical, in rate structure, retail rate components, and monthly charges, to what the same customer would pay without a system. That is the primary-source basis for calling this full retail-rate net metering. When your panels export more than you draw in a billing month, the excess becomes a credit that reduces the next bill, rolls forward month to month, and accumulates until the end of your 12-month annualized period. You pick when that period starts; if you never pick, it defaults to the first full billing period after interconnection and generation.

The catch arrives once a year. At the end of the annualized period, leftover kWh are paid out at the avoided cost of wholesale power, defined as the average locational marginal price in the utility's PJM transmission zone. That is a market number, not a filed rate, and no PSE&G tariff sheet read for this guide prints a current dollar-per-kWh buyback figure. The rule also caps system size at the electricity you used over a trailing 12-month period of your choosing, bars solar-only fees that would not apply to other customers, and leaves the renewable attributes of your generation with you unless a contract assigns them away.

PSE&G's own tariff adds detail worth knowing. Section 15 says usage for a solar customer means net usage, PSE&G selects and supplies the bi-directional meter, and the customer pays all interconnection costs plus any line or service extension charge. Community Solar participants cannot also net meter. And one billing quirk: Section 15.7 makes the Budget Plan, the equal payment plan, unavailable to net metering customers. If a level monthly payment matters to your household, that changes with solar.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 14:8-4.3; N.J.A.C. 14:8-4.2; and PSE&G electric tariff No. 17, Section 15.

SuSI pays $77 per MWh for 15 years. It just took a cut.

The Successor Solar Incentive Program, created by Board Order on July 28, 2021 under the Clean Energy Act of 2018 and the Solar Act of 2021, is the incentive layer on top of net metering. A home system falls under the Administratively Determined Incentive, the ADI Program, which covers net metered residential projects of 5 MW dc or less. Each megawatt hour of metered generation creates one NJ SREC-II, and the facility earns them for 15 years from commercial operation.

The number that matters: the Board's May 21, 2026 order, effective May 28, 2026, cut the residential SREC-II from $85 to $77 per MWh, an $8 cut, for registrations with Registration Received status submitted on or after July 27, 2026 at 12:01 AM EST. Non-residential, community solar, and remote net metering levels did not change. The Energy Year 2027 residential block is 300 MW dc, first-come, first-served, open until the block fills or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first, with no waiting list. Remaining capacity is posted on the ADI portal homepage, not in any document we could cite here.

One warning about stale numbers. NJBPU's undated New Jersey Solar Factsheet still circulates a $90 per SREC-II residential value from the 2021 transition era. That figure is superseded by the May 2026 order. If a sales proposal shows $85 or $90, the model is out of date and every downstream payback number inherits the error. The mechanics also require follow-through: registration in the SuSI portal, a post-construction packet, an NJ Certification Number, a PJM-EIS GATS account, and a payment account with InClime, the SREC-II Administrator.

Sources: NJBPU May 21, 2026 ADI three-year review order; ADI program page; SuSI program page; N.J.A.C. 14:8-11.6; and the superseded NJBPU solar factsheet.

Two tax exemptions, one automatic and one you must file for

New Jersey exempts receipts from sales of qualifying solar energy devices and systems from Sales and Use Tax under N.J.S.A. 54:32B-8.33, a statute on the books since September 11, 1980. The mechanism is paperwork at purchase: the buyer issues the seller a fully completed Exempt Use Certificate, Form ST-4, noting the exemption and the installation address, per N.J.A.C. 18:24-26.4. An individual buying for personal use can supply a driver's license number instead of a business tax ID. Note the boundary: the exemption covers the solar equipment purchase, not the electric bill, where PSE&G's tariff builds sales tax into every charge at the 1.06625 factor.

The property tax exemption under P.L. 2008, c. 90, codified at N.J.S.A. 54:4-3.113a through 54:4-3.113g, exempts the assessed value a certified renewable energy system adds to the home: assessed value with the system minus assessed value without it. It is not automatic. The owner files a written application under oath, on a form prescribed by the Division of Taxation, with the municipal construction-code enforcing agency, which certifies the system and sends a copy to the tax assessor. Skip the filing and you can end up paying tax on value the statute says is exempt.

Sources: N.J.S.A. 54:32B-8.33; Division of Taxation publication S&U-6; N.J.A.C. 18:24-26.4; and P.L. 2008, c. 90.

What we could not verify

As of August 25, 2026, the research behind this page did not establish a current dollar-per-kWh figure for the annual true-up buyback, which the rule ties to a PJM market average rather than a filed tariff number. It did not find a PSE&G-published all-in residential cents-per-kWh rate; the totals above are computed sums. It did not find the remaining Energy Year 2027 residential ADI block capacity, which lives on the ADI portal homepage. It did not find a PSE&G compliance filing implementing the January 2026 interconnection fees, a published average elapsed time from application to Permission to Operate, a final report or Board decision in the Docket No. QO24090723 net metering successor proceeding, or an open PSE&G base distribution rate case. Those are real gaps. We would rather show you the gap than a stale number.

Sources: PSE&G electric tariffs index; ADI program page; NJBPU public notices index; and NJBPU reports index.