New Jersey’s Office of Clean Energy has issued a straw proposal for the FY2016 Energy Storage program and will accept comments on the proposal through May 21, 2015. The proposed funding level for the program is $6 million, but the program budget has not been finally approved yet. As proposed, the program would operate under a continuous, open-enrollment process, with pre-defined, prescriptive rebates. The following parameters would apply:

• Eligibility is limited to projects located at existing, non-residential, net-metered, Class I renewables facilities.
• The minimum project capacity is 50 kW, but multiple projects within a single utility’s service territory may be aggregated to meet the minimum size benchmark.
• Energy Resilience Bank projects are not eligible for incentives.
• Two-thirds of the available funding will be set aside initially (for six months) for public and critical facilities.
• Storage facilities generally must be charged exclusively from on-site Class I renewables, with minor exceptions.
• For emergency purposes, the storage system must be capable of supporting a facility’s critical load (but not for a specified time period).
• Incentives are prescriptive, initially set at $0.15/W and $0.20/W for non-public and non-critical facilities, and $0.20/W and $0.25/W for public and critical facilities. (The lower incentive level applies to projects that participate in ancillary service markets.)
• The maximum incentive per applicant is $500,000; incentives are also capped at 30% of total installed costs (after subtracting any other direct incentives).
• Projects that must undergo a Level III interconnection study are eligible for reimbursement of 50% of that study’s costs.