Two-by-five foot solar panels have been appearing on telephone poles throughout Hudson and Bergen Counties as a New Jersey-based power company attempts to green its energy sources by installing roughly 200,000 panels in the area.
The panels are a bit of an usual sight -- especially in urban residential areas like Jersey City. But Fred Lynk, managing marketing strategist for power company PSE&G said, "As long as the panels have clear access to the Southern sky they can pretty much go up anywhere."
Lynk said each solar panel will generate 250 watts of power that will be pumped into the PSE&G grid. The Solar 4 All project isn’t necessarily new; PSE&G began working on it in 2009 when they erected large ground-level solar farms in Central and Southern New Jersey. The solar panels on telephone poles have only recently started to go up.
The Solar 4 All project is expected to generate 80 mega watts of power for PSE&G to help the company meet its state mandated 4.4 percent of green energy.
Lynk said all of the panels will be in place by 2012. Customers should be aware that they're footing the cost of the $515 million project with a 0.10 cent increase in their electricity bills.