Camden County to create $49 million solar-power network

Camden County is preparing to borrow up to $49 million for a sprawling solar-power network that would be among the largest in New Jersey.

The county plans to begin work in early 2012 installing rooftop and on-the-ground solar panels across its offices, libraries, and college campuses, totaling 7 megawatts of generating capacity, which would exceed that of some of the state's largest solar farms.

The project comes as New Jersey continues to rank second in the nation (after California) in generation of solar power, buoyed by an incentive system that allows solar generators to sell credits to power plants and other polluting industries to help offset the costs of installation.

With a declining property tax base, Camden County has been trying to cut costs for years. In April it laid off 260 employees, almost one-sixth of its workforce. While the cost savings from solar are still being determined, officials are hoping to cut the county's electricity bills up to 25 percent.

"The program is part of an ongoing countywide transformation effort, designed to make its operations more efficient," Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr. said in a statement.

What financial stake the county's taxpayers will have in the project remains undecided.

The deadline for formal proposals for the project is Dec. 8, but already solar developers nationwide have expressed interest, officials said. The selected firm will build and maintain the network over the next 15 years.

The county is prepared to borrow the money itself, but is waiting to see if one of the developers is prepared to finance the project, said Jim Blanda, executive director of the Camden County Improvement Authority.

"It's pretty early yet," he said. "We're going out with the dictate that savings will be derived from these installations."

One of the questions hanging over the initiative is the future of New Jersey's market for the solar credits - called solar renewable energy certificates, or SRECs - a crucial factor in developing cost-effective electricity from the sun.

Residents and businesses earn credits by using solar panels to generate power. The credits are typically then purchased by power companies and other industries to meet the state's tightening pollution controls.

Since last summer, the trading price of the credits has fallen by more than 50 percent, leaving some wondering whether the state incentive program has been too successful.

With more than 12,000 solar projects completed, the market has been flooded with more solar credits than power companies presently need as they work toward New Jersey's 2020 goal of 23.5 percent of electricity generated through alternative energy sources.

"In the last year, we've seen a lot of big installations, which have driven down the price of SRECs," said Matt Elliott, an advocate with Environment New Jersey.

Even so, local governments have been eager to get in on the solar revolution that has swept the state, said New Jersey Board of Public Utilities spokesman Gregory Reinert.

"They have caps on their budgets, and they have to look for cost savings any way they can," he said.