On August 19, 2026 the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities released a straw proposal for Phase 2, Block 1 of the Garden State Energy Storage Program. It covers roughly 150 megawatts of distributed storage statewide, and the part homeowners care about is this: it would pay you, over a ten-year term, for letting a battery in your garage help the grid.
It is a proposal. It is not open for enrollment, and the Board has not published a dollar figure. We are saying that plainly because a lot of what you will read about this program right now is a guess dressed up as a number. Below is what the proposal actually says, what is still undecided, and the one decision that is worth making before it opens.
What the August 2026 proposal actually says
The straw proposal describes a Distributed Storage Capacity block of approximately 150 MW. Your utility — not a state office — would run your side of it. All four New Jersey electric distribution companies are named as administrators, and each would handle enrollment, dispatch, performance tracking and payment for its own customers.
- Atlantic City Electric South Jersey — Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Salem and parts of Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties.
- Jersey Central Power & Light The largest footprint — Monmouth, Ocean, Morris, Sussex, Hunterdon and much of Middlesex.
- PSE&G The dense urban corridor — Essex, Hudson, Union, Bergen and the Perth Amboy area we are based in.
- Rockland Electric The northern Bergen and Passaic sliver served out of New York.
How you would get paid: dispatch events, not a rebate
This is the part most homeowners misread. A rebate is a discount at purchase. What is proposed here is a performance payment: annual payments across a ten-year term, based on how your battery performs during dispatch events.
A dispatch event is a window when the grid is strained — a July heat wave, late afternoon, when every air conditioner in the state is running at once. Your utility signals your battery, your battery discharges the energy it stored earlier, and the grid does not have to buy that peak power. The Board’s stated reason for paying you is that this reduces the state’s exposure to PJM capacity prices and lowers what utilities spend to serve everyone.
That is the mechanism people mean when they say virtual power plant. Thousands of home batteries, discharging together for a few hours, standing in for a peaker plant. New Jersey is targeting 2,000 MW of installed storage by 2030, and residential batteries are how a meaningful slice of that gets built.
What has not been decided yet
We would rather tell you what is missing than fill the gaps in.
The proposal does not state a payment rate. It does not state a cap per household, a start date for enrollment, or which battery hardware will qualify. Those are exactly the questions the comment period exists to settle. The Board held a stakeholder meeting on September 3, 2026, and written comments are due by 5 p.m. ET on September 10, 2026 — which means the design can still change before anything opens.
Anyone quoting you a specific New Jersey battery payment today is quoting a program that has not been finalized.
The one thing worth doing before it opens
Programs like this open on a first-come basis and fill. The homeowners who get in are the ones whose homework was already done — not the ones who start shopping the week enrollment opens.
Doing the homework does not mean buying a battery on a proposal. It means knowing three things about your own house, all of which are free to find out:
- Which utility you are actually on It determines which administrator runs your enrollment, and people in Middlesex and Bergen are frequently wrong about this.
- Whether your electrical panel can take storage Panel capacity and available breaker space are the most common reason a battery quote comes back higher than expected. It is a fifteen-minute check.
- What your peak-hour usage actually looks like Your last twelve months of bills show how much you draw on the hottest afternoons. That is the number a dispatch-based program pays against, and it decides whether one battery makes sense or two.
Solar first, or battery first?
In New Jersey the honest answer for most homes is still solar first, for one boring reason: a battery you charge from the grid is shifting when you buy power, while a battery you charge from your own roof is replacing power you never bought. The second is worth more, and it is worth more every year your rate goes up.
There are exceptions. If your roof is not a candidate, if you have medical equipment that cannot lose power, or if outages on your street are a recurring problem rather than an annual inconvenience, a standalone battery is a reasonable buy on its own terms — before any program payment enters the math.
We install both across New Jersey, and if your roof needs replacing first we will say so rather than mount panels on a roof with five years left in it.
Commercial and multi-family properties
The Garden State Energy Storage Program’s distributed block is not only a residential story. If you own a warehouse, a retail plaza, a refrigerated facility or a multi-family building in New Jersey, storage economics work differently for you — demand charges, not just energy rates, are usually the largest line on your bill, and storage attacks demand charges directly.
That is a separate assessment with a separate model. If that is your situation, start with the commercial assessment rather than the homeowner review.
Frequently asked questions
Can I enroll in New Jersey’s home battery program right now?
No. As of August 26, 2026 this is a straw proposal from the NJBPU, released August 19, 2026. Enrollment is not open and no start date has been announced. Written comments on the design were due September 10, 2026.
How much will New Jersey pay me for a home battery?
The Board has not published a rate. The proposal describes annual incentive payments over a ten-year term based on performance during dispatch events, but the amount is not stated. Treat any specific dollar figure you see quoted today as an estimate, not a program term.
Who runs the program — the state or my utility?
Your utility, under Board oversight. Atlantic City Electric, Jersey Central Power & Light, PSE&G and Rockland Electric would each handle enrollment, dispatch, performance tracking and payment for their own customers.
Does my battery still work in an outage if it is enrolled?
Yes. Dispatch events and backup are different jobs. An event is a scheduled window when the grid asks your battery to discharge; backup is what happens automatically when your power goes out. A properly configured system reserves a floor of stored energy so an event never empties the battery you were counting on.
Do I need solar panels to qualify for a battery program?
The proposal has not published its equipment requirements. In other states’ storage programs, batteries qualify whether they are installed with new solar, added to existing solar, or standalone. We size for your house either way and tell you which case you are in.
What is a virtual power plant, in plain terms?
A few thousand home batteries that a utility can call on at the same moment, so that collectively they do the job of a power plant that only runs on the worst days of the year. Your battery stays yours; you are paid for the hours it helps.
Related pages
- How whole-home battery backup works
- Home battery backup in New Jersey
- Residential solar installation
- Solar panels in New Jersey
- Why your NJ electric bill keeps climbing
- Ways to lower your electric bill
- Do I need a new roof before solar?
- Free commercial solar and storage assessment
- Where we work
Find out what your house can actually do
The review is free and takes about twenty minutes. We read your last twelve months of bills, confirm which utility you are on, check whether your panel can take storage, and tell you what solar and a battery would realistically do for your bill — with or without a state program.
If the answer is that you should wait, we will tell you that too. There is no obligation and we do not sell your information.