New Jersey solar panels on farms program awarded its first 16 projects on August 17, 2026, letting each farm keep growing crops or raising livestock while hosting solar panels overhead or between the rows, a practice called agrivoltaics. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the state agency that regulates utilities and runs the pilot, approved 52.06 megawatts of solar capacity across the 16 projects, a megawatt being the unit that measures how much electricity a power plant can produce at once. The mechanism the pilot is testing is simple, let a farm add solar income without taking the land out of production, and decide from the results whether to make the program permanent.
Which farms got approved and how much power it makes
The 16 approved projects sit on farms in 8 counties, Atlantic, Cumberland, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Mercer, Monmouth, Salem and Warren, growing soybeans, hay, grains, vegetables, fruits and specialty crops, and raising livestock underneath or beside the panels. Each project team must include a landowner, a farmer and a solar operator working together, so a farm cannot host the panels without an active farming partner staying on the land. 3 companies won awards across the 16 projects, FFP Origination LLC, NJ Solar 2000 LLC and AETS Development Holdings LLC. Individual projects are capped at 10 megawatts each, and the whole pilot can support up to 200 megawatts over 3 years.
Show the numbers
| Year one target | 65 |
| Year one awarded | 52.06 |
| Three year program cap | 200 |
How much interest the program drew and did not use
The 52.06 megawatts awarded filled about 80% of the 65 megawatt target set for this first year, a figure derived from the year by year results table the New Jersey Clean Energy Program itself publishes for the pilot. The first solicitation drew far more interest than it could accept, 33 preliminary proposals totaling about 140 megawatts, or roughly 2.7 times the capacity that was ultimately awarded, so most of what farmers and developers proposed did not make this first cut. The awarded capacity used about 26% of the entire 200 megawatt cap set for all 3 years of the pilot, leaving most of the program still to be allocated in future rounds.
The 28 figure is a snapshot from December 2025, an earlier point in the same review window. It is not confirmed as the same continuous count as the 33 proposals and 16 awards from August 2026.
Show the numbers
| Proposals submitted | 33 |
| Approved for full application | 28 |
| Projects awarded | 16 |
What the pilot requires and who runs it
The pilot was created under the Dual Use Solar Energy Act of 2021 and is run by the Board of Public Utilities together with the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, the Department of Environmental Protection, the State Agriculture Development Committee and the Rutgers University Agrivoltaics Program, the research partner studying how crops and livestock fare under the panels.
This pilot dual use program will enable us to support New Jersey farmers in making their operations more profitable while adding capacity to the grid.
Ben Hertz Shargel, president, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. Source 1.
The BPU dual use pilot program is a great opportunity to see grid scale projects working with and around active agriculture production.
Ed Wengryn, state Secretary of Agriculture, New Jersey. Source 1.
New Jersey treats these 16 projects as a test case. The results from this first round, how much power they actually produce and how the crops and livestock underneath perform, are what the state says will decide whether the dual use pilot becomes a permanent program beyond its current 3 year, 200 megawatt limit.