After three years in the making, New Jersey has finally unveiled the successor program to the erstwhile SREC and TREC incentive programs for renewable energy customers. SuSI, short for The Successor Solar Incentive program, offers similar incentives as its predecessors, but gets rid of all the uncertainties surrounding the solar incentive program for residential buyers.
Here’s everything you should know about The Successor Solar Incentive.
Overview of the SuSI Program
The SuSI program is similar to SREC and TREC programs in most ways that matter, except for how the renewable energy certificates are priced.
Under the SREC program, the prices of SREC certificates were determined by market forces of demand and supply. So, the prices fluctuated from time to time, introducing a certain degree of uncertainty for homeowners considering the financial viability of a home solar solution.
SuSI puts an end to that uncertainty by fixing up the price of all SREC-II’s earned by home solar buyers.
Also, once a home solar solution is signed up for SuSI incentives, it keeps receiving the incentives for straight 15 years. This brings predictability and stability for home solar customers.
How Much Are SREC-II’s Worth Under SuSI?
Under the SuSI program, all residential SREC-II’s enjoy fixed pricing of $90, irrespective of the size or type of your home solar solution.
Calculating the amount of your savings from selling off SREC-II’s is quite simple. Let’s take you through it.
As was the case with SREC, you earn an SREC-II under SuSI every time your home solar solution produces 1,000kWh or 1MWh of power.
A typical 10kW solar installation in New Jersey produces 12MWh of solar power annually. So, your annual earnings from selling your accumulated SREC-II’s alone will fetch you $1,080 (12*$90).
Although your home solar solution will likely work for 25-30 years, the SuSI program offers incentives for only 15 of those. During that time, your solar panels will degrade slowly at the rate of 0.5% annually. So, your annual earnings from SREC-II’s will decrease slowly but steadily over time.
In summary, the 15-year earnings from SREC-II’s for a 10kW solar system will not be $16,200 (15*$1080), but instead, they’ll be closer to $11,592.91.
Still, that’s a lot of money over the years, which is in addition to various other incentives like a federal tax credit, net metering, and so on.
Final Words
The SuSI program has already started accepting applications from Saturday, August 28, 2021. So, grab this opportunity today and lock in your earnings for the next 15 years. There has never been a better time to go solar in NJ.