Solar panels coming to utility poles in Montclair

The solar panels that Public Service Electric & Gas Co. has been putting up across northern and central New Jersey will soon be coming to Montclair.

Starting next Monday, Jan. 23, contractors for PSE&G will start suspending the panels about 15 feet off the ground on utility poles in the township, as they've done in many neighboring municipalities, including Clifton, Verona and Cedar Grove.

Cary Africk, the Township Council member for Montclair's 2nd Ward, said the 5-foot-wide by 2.5-foot-high panels are fine on major thoroughfares, where they will likely be camouflaged amid the busy streetscape. But Africk was concerned that the solar units could spoil the look of quieter, residential streets, he said.

"People will get used to it on streets like Grove Street, where there is so much other stuff," Africk said. "But in a residential area, it will have a much greater impact.

"It has the potential to be very ugly, depending on where they put them," Africk said. "It can blend in, or people can drive around and say, 'What is that?'"

The look of the panels has caused a stir in some nearby towns such as Verona, where PSE&G delayed installing the units after township officials expressed misgivings.

Verona's township manager, Joseph Martin, said last October that municipal officials were holding meetings with PSE&G reps about the program and he was hoping that, especially along Bloomfield Avenue, where the township invested money to spruce up its business district, "we can work with Public Service just to avoid putting panels in that area."

Fran Sullivan, a PSE&G spokesperson, said the panels are "no more intrusive than any other piece of equipment on those poles."

Sullivan was uncertain how many panels would be going up in Montclair. Work crews scout for locations that seem to fit the bill, and once they find a good spot they set up a unit, a process that takes 20 to 30 minutes.

Under PSE&G policy, utility poles with a clear exposure to the southern sky and that have access to the proper-voltage electric wires are eligible for the solar units. The panels will only be mounted on poles where they won't conflict with existing equipment.

"We don't pre-survey the town. The crews go out with a supply of panels and if they find a pole that meets the criteria, they install the solar unit," Sullivan said.

When the entire "Solar 4 All" project is complete later this year, there will be 180,000 to 200,000 utility-pole-mounted panels across the state providing a combined 40 megawatts of solar-generated electricity. That's enough energy to power about 6,500 average-size New Jersey homes annually. So far more than 120,000 panels have been installed.

PSE&G estimates that the project's environmental impact on air quality will be on par with removing about 3,800 cars from the road for one year.

In Montclair, workers will not be putting up the panels in designated historic districts, meaning the Upper Montclair and Montclair Center business districts and the Pine Street Historic District should not have any panels within their confines.

But the rest of Montclair is fair game, unless an objection is raised based on safety concerns. A complaint grounded solely in aesthetics won't be enough to have a panel removed or prevented from being installed.

"We can't go into some towns and follow this policy in this town and not in that town," Sullivan said. "We have been absolutely evenhanded about installing these solar units."

He said PSE&G is "willing to talk if there is some kind of real issue" with where a panel is situated, but generally "there are not a lot of exceptions."

The panels have undergone testing in which they have withstood 110 mph winds, plus PSE&G has not "had any incidents of snow falling off and injuring someone," Sullivan said. The panels heat up as they collect energy from the sun, and that rise in temperature prevents significant accumulations of snow from forming on the panels.

PSE&G decided to go with pole-attached units since its service area is heavily developed and populated, and this would provide a means to generate solar power without acquiring land or the rights to put up solar panels on the ground or on rooftops, Sullivan said.