New Jersey solar installations hit a record in the month of January, with about 85MW getting installed in the month.   The reason for the tremendous bulge is due to the timing of the end of the Treasury 1603 tax grant.  This brings total installed capacity to about 650MW.   As can be seen from the table below, this is about as much solar as is needed for the 2014 SREC year, which begins June 1, 2013.

We would expect the rate of installation to drop dramatically from the January level, but the 1603 impact should be impacting installations throughout the 2012 calendar year.  We are estimating install rates to average 20MW/month for the period between now and the end of the 2013 SREC year, or May of 2013.

With these estimates, we expect to see depressed SREC prices in New Jersey for the foreseeable future unless there are either legislative or BPU changes to increase demand.

SREC                            RPS installation                    Projected                          Excess
Year                            requirements (MW)        installation (MW)*           installation (MW)
2012                                      368                                   500                                  132
2013                                      497                                   730                                  233
2014                                      643                                   970                                  327
2015                                      804                                1,090                                  286
2016                                      958                                1,210                                  252
2017                                   1,131                                1,330                                  199
2018                                   1,326                                1,450                                  124
2019                                   1,548                                1,570                                    22
2020                                   1,803                                1,690                                 -113

*Assumes 20MW/month thru May 2013, then 10MW/month thereafter
Also, this does not include the cumulative impact of banked SRECs, which would increase the number of years until the market is in balance.