This Week in Solar

Right now, four utility companies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania will pay homeowners to install home batteries, either up front or over time once they have a battery installed.

If you live in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, it’s time to talk to Exact Solar about installing battery backup for your home so your utility company can pay you for storing power and running your home on it in times of high need.

Schedule a Free Consultation With Exact Solar’s Team

Now, why would utility companies do this? Because I promise you, it’s not too good to be true. Everyone wins.

Why utility companies are doing this, in a nutshell:

One of the major reasons that energy has gotten so expensive in Pennsylvania and New Jersey is that it’s gotten very, very expensive to make sure there’s enough energy to go around at times of high need, like when everyone goes home and turns their heat on on the coldest days of the year.

That’s essentially what people are talking about when they talk about PJM and data centers raising energy prices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. All this new data center buildout is particularly expensive because data centers not only take a lot of power, but they can never have downtime.

So the price of making sure there’s always enough power to go around has shot through the roof.

It’s now so expensive to generate power at times of high need that it’s cheaper for utility companies to pay thousands of homeowners with batteries to run their homes off battery power at times of high need than it is to build new energy-generating resources.

This is what’s known as a Virtual Power Plant, or VPP. A VPP is basically thousands of home batteries teaming up to act like one big power plant. On the few hours a year when the grid is stretched thin, your utility sends a signal to your battery, and your battery powers your home for a little while instead of the grid.

For a few hours at times of very high need, the utility company can use the power the home would have been using elsewhere.

Four different utility companies in our region have launched these programs: PSE&G, JCP&L, PECO, and PPL.

Depending on where you live, that could mean up to $5,000 off your battery up front, or a few hundred dollars a year in checks, adding up to a few thousand dollars per year over time.

If you buy power from one of those four utility companies, it’s time to talk to Exact Solar about battery backup paired with solar for your home. Each utility program has different rules, so we’ll need to see your energy usage and who you buy power from before we can tell you how much you qualify for!

Schedule a Free Consultation With Exact Solar’s Team

Aaron talks with Yann Brandt, the founder and managing editor of SolarWakeup, co-host of the Boots on the Ground podcast (with former SEIA CEO Abby Hopper), and former President and CEO of FTC Solar.

Yann has spent 20 years building, scaling, and turning around solar companies at every level of the industry.

If you want to know what pro-solar people should actually ask their lawmakers for after Election Day, and why showing up matters more than being right, this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Yann on LinkedIn here.

Read Yann’s daily solar newsletter at SolarWakeup.

Listen to Boots on the Ground with Yann Brandt and Abby Hopper here.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Energy bills in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are climbing faster than almost anywhere in the country, and no one has a good plan to fix it. You can opt out of the cycle by going solar. If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, we’d love to run your numbers.

Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar

• Why most solar companies have never met their lawmakers (and how that cost homeowners the 30% ownership tax credit).
• How a decades-old law governing satellite dishes could be the model for faster, cheaper rooftop solar.
• Why your electric bill is rising faster than the rest of the country if you live in PJM’s territory

“Ultimately right now, most people are not doing it at all, which isn’t going to help when you need to make a call and ask for something, because they don’t know you and they don’t know what you stand for.”

— Yann Brandt

Disclaimer: I (Aaron Nichols) took a risk by opening my electrical panel to install the APMeter, and neither Exact Solar nor I would ever recommend that any homeowner take the same risk by opening their electrical panel and attempting to install anything themselves. Our official recommendation is to wait until plug-in solar is legal in your area before purchasing an inverter, and to always hire trained professionals for any projects that would modify your electrical panel in any way.

In today’s video, Aaron unboxes a plug-in solar inverter from APsystems, sets it up at home, and reports back after two and a half months with exactly how much energy it made and how much money that amount of energy would save anyone living in Exact Solar’s service area.

Plug-in solar (sometimes called balcony solar) is about as simple as solar gets. You connect a panel or two to a small inverter, plug it into a regular wall outlet, and it feeds power straight into your home. There’s no roof installation, and no permits.

If you want to know how much plug-in solar actually saves in the real world, and who it makes the most sense for, this is the episode for you.

Thank you to APSystems for sending us an inverter to test. You can learn more about the APsystems EZ1 plug-in inverter here:

APSystems EZ1 Inverter

• How much electricity a plug-in solar system made in two and a half months, and what that’s worth on a Pennsylvania or New Jersey electric bill.
• The small gadget that let Aaron run his system without sending a single watt back to the grid, and why that mattered where he lives.

“What’s really cool about this is that I can own an energy-generating resource and plug it into the grid without anyone’s approval and save some money. That’s what I love about plug-in solar.”

— Aaron Nichols

The midterm elections are just a few short days away, and Americans are more divided than ever, except on one key issue: data centers. 75% of Americans across party lines are opposed to them.

Turns out solar energy can help.

Aaron talks with Mike Casey (one of his personal clean energy heroes), founder and president of Tigercomm, a marketing and PR firm that has spent more than 20 years helping clean energy companies win over customers, investors, and the communities where they want to build.

If you want to know why data centers became so unpopular so fast, and how solar might help fix it, this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn here.

Learn more about Tigercomm at tigercomm.us.

Listen to Mike’s weekly show, This Week in Cleantech, co-hosted with Paul Gerke.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Energy costs keep climbing. Data centers are a big reason, and there’s so much momentum and funding behind their development that energy is only going to get more expensive for the foreseeable future.

You can opt out of this cycle by going solar. If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, Exact Solar would love to show you how much you can save.

Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar

• The four big reasons roughly 3 in 4 Americans don’t want a data center in their community.
• Why powering data centers with solar and other clean energy makes communities noticeably more willing to say yes.
• How a 40-year PR and politics veteran built a respected career while staying blunt, funny, and completely himself.

“This is not a merit-based application process. This is a community consent-seeking process. That’s a huge difference.”

— Mike Casey

On Monday, U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, introduced the Socket Full of Sunshine Act. Even if this doesn’t pass, it 100% wins the prestigious “Aaron Nichols’s best-named congressional bill of 2026” award.

Quick refresher: plug-in solar (also called balcony solar) means that someone can buy and use a solar inverter that plugs straight into a regular wall outlet without local permitting or utility permission, so long as the panels attached to the inverter do not exceed the allowed wattage. This generally means 1-4 solar panels can be used at once.

I tested one of these inverters and a few panels on my own house, and will be releasing a full breakdown next week, so subscribe if you’d like to see that when it releases.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Here’s what Menendez’s bill would do:

1. Make every state look at it. Each state’s public utility commission (PUC), the regulators who set the rules for your power company, would have to open a process on plug-in solar within one year of the bill passing and finish within two. I am unsure what “open a process” would mean, but I’m sure that’s better than nothing.
2. Help lower-income families afford a kit. Low- and moderate-income households could get up to $1,000 off. That matters, since a 1,200-watt kit (the biggest size the bill allows) can cost more than $2,000. It’s important to note that if you buy the inverter separately, and then buy whatever panels you can find on Facebook Marketplace or as overstock from a solar distributor, you can get a system for substantially cheaper.
3. Protect renters. To get the rebate money, states would have to protect renters’ right to use plug-in solar.
4. Favor American-made kits. Only kits with more than 55% American-made parts (by cost) would qualify for rebates.

This bill almost certainly won’t pass before the current Congress wraps up. But it can be reintroduced in January, and it probably won’t be alone.

Bright Saver, a nonprofit that advocates for plug-in solar, says it’s working with three more House members and one senator from a red state on their own bills.

It’s only a matter of time before plug-in solar becomes federally legal and is no longer a states’ rights issue.

Aaron talks with Peter Buck, Director of Education at Penn State Sustainability and co-director of Penn State’s Local Climate Action Program. Peter’s spent the last decade as a township supervisor, school board member, and climate advisor, getting solar onto public buildings across central Pennsylvania.

If you want to know how to get solar onto the buildings in your own town (and why the best way to sell it is to barely talk about solar at all), this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn here.

Learn about Pennsylvania’s Solar for Schools grant program here.

• How a township supervisor turned a routine garage replacement into a solar-powered, net-positive building.
• Why Pennsylvania’s Solar for Schools grant program means your local school district could go solar sooner than you think.
• What a heavy metal frontman can teach the solar industry about building a movement people actually want to join.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Since 2005, our in-house team has designed, permitted, installed, and serviced thousands of solar energy systems.

We’re in this for the long haul, unlike the solar companies you hear about on the news.

If you live in Pennsylvania or New Jersey and you’re curious what solar could do for your electric bill, we’d love to show you exactly how much you can be saving by putting solar on your home or business.

Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar

“Solar isn’t necessarily the story, but it is a great enabler to a better life.”

— Peter Buck

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Energy declared a power grid emergency for the entire PJM region, which includes every home and business in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The order runs from Tuesday, October 13th, through Friday, October 16th.

If you want to know why and what you can do, today's episode is for you.

Aaron talks with Tony DeFazio, founder and principal of Sustainable PR, a New York–based public relations firm that helps renewable energy developers and environmental advocates earn media coverage and win over the communities where they want to build.

If you want to know why so many local solar and battery projects get blocked, and what it actually takes to earn a community’s trust and a reporter’s attention, this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Tony on LinkedIn here.

Learn more about Sustainable PR at sustainablepr.com.

• How developers can find out what a town actually cares about before they file a single application.
• The two ingredients every site needs before it ever reaches a town board.
• Why most companies that say they want “thought leadership” don’t have a thought leader (and how you can identify the right person in your company).

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Since 2005, our in-house team has designed, permitted, installed, and serviced thousands of solar energy systems.

We’re in this for the long haul, unlike the solar companies you hear about on the news.

If you live in Pennsylvania or New Jersey and you’re curious what solar could do for your electric bill, we’d love to show you exactly how much you can be saving by putting solar on your home or business.

Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar

“When you’re gaining approval for development projects, you’re never going to win over everybody. There’s going to be opposition we can’t convert, and we’re just going to let it go. We're going to focus our attention on the convertibles, as well as the folks in the community who are legitimate, bona fide environmental advocates.”

— Tony DeFazio

Over the last three years, New Jersey has seen the biggest electricity rate increases of any state. Over the last five years, Pennsylvania has seen the third-biggest rate increase.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

This is according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) report from July 2026. This federal agency tracks what Americans pay for power across the country and shows how bad things have gotten for New Jersey and Pennsylvania ratepayers:

• New Jersey: up 36.8% in three years. That’s more than double the national average of 15.4%.
• Pennsylvania: up 58.5% in five years, almost double the national average of 32.4%.

In the plainest terms possible, this means that if you live in New Jersey, and you used to pay $100/month for electricity, and have changed nothing about your life or electricity usage in the last three years, you’re now paying $136.80 per month for the same service that has not improved or changed in any way.

In Pennsylvania, if the same scenario is true, then you’re paying $158.50 per month, when you were paying $100 in 2021.

Now, it’s an imperfect comparison to go by percentage rise, because New Jersey’s energy was more expensive than Pennsylvania’s to begin with. But the fact remains that energy bills are going up at record rates.

It’s especially bad in the Northeast.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-one-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

As we just said, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are in the top 3 for the fastest-rising energy costs in the nation, and no one has a good plan to fix it.

The only thing you can do to take control is opt out by putting solar on your home. Exact Solar has several different ways to help you do so that will meet your financial situation.

You can:

• Pay cash up front
• Finance and own the system over time with a loan
• Or put $0 down with our PPA that will dramatically lower your energy bill as soon as your solar energy system is operational, and lock in the same price for power for the next 25 years.

We only work with ethical financiers that we trust, backed by the Amicus Solar Cooperative. Exact Solar will never pressure you to sign up for an unethical financing option that you barely understand.

If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, we’d love to show you how much you can save by going solar.

Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar

Aaron talks with Eli Andrews, founder and CEO of civicIQ, a nonprofit that uses AI to help solar, wind, and battery projects earn support from rural communities. Eli also teaches sustainability and strategic leadership at Penn State.

If you want to know what makes people actually change their minds about solar (and why arguing with them usually isn’t it), this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Eli on LinkedIn here.

Learn more about civicIQ at civiciq.org.

Want to reach Eli directly? Email him at [email protected].

• How an experimental AI moved more than 1 in 5 solar opponents off the “no” column in just five interactions (and why where a fact comes from may matter more than the fact itself).
• The one question developers should ask a rural town before anyone shows up to a zoning meeting (hint: it isn’t “are you for or against solar?”).
• How a nonprofit CEO with zero coding experience used three different AIs to build his own clean-powered AI on a home computer in three days.

“We live here. This [solar] is going to be part of our lives for the next 30 years. You might have 30 years of revenue stream here, but we’re going to be living with this thing.”

— Eli Andrews