Early in my energy career, I took customer payments and saw firsthand how a high seasonal bill could destabilize a household budget. That experience is why I believe every electricity debate must begin with the customer.
New Jersey families are under real pressure from rising electric costs. They have also seen the consequences of an electric system tested by severe weather. July’s storms affected hundreds of thousands of utility customers and required a large restoration effort. Customers deserve urgency, transparency and measurable improvement, and not a false choice between affordability and reliability.
Governor Sherrill is right to treat electricity costs as an urgent issue and to accelerate the development of additional in-state generation. More supply is only part of the solution. New Jersey must also be able to modernize the grid that carries power to homes and businesses and make better use of the electricity already available.
A customer sees one bill, but that bill reflects several different costs. The price of electricity supply is shaped largely by regional wholesale and capacity markets and New Jersey’s state-supervised Basic Generation Service auctions. Utility delivery charges support local poles, wires, substations, customer service and storm restoration. The distinction between supply and delivery must be understood, so policymakers can match each cost driver with the right solution.
That is why the efforts of New Jersey’s utilities matter. Investments in automated switching, stronger substations, remote monitoring, priority circuits, vegetation management and communications can reduce outages and help crews restore service faster. For example, JCP&L’s EnergizeNJ program focuses on grid modernization, system resilience and substation upgrades. Its broader rate proposal also seeks to continue reliability investments while delaying the residential impact of new base rates until 2028. Regulators should scrutinize every dollar and require results, but postponing prudent investment does not eliminate costs. It can leave customers paying more after the next failure.
Energy efficiency is New Jersey’s strongest near-term affordability opportunity. The Alliance to Save Energy has urged the state to preserve robust, utility-led efficiency and peak-demand-reduction programs. Weatherization, efficient heating and cooling, connected devices, demand response, distributed resources and virtual power plants can lower individual bills while reducing the systemwide peaks that drive some of the most expensive infrastructure and capacity needs.
Utilities are indispensable to scaling these solutions. They know where the grid is constrained, which customers face the highest burdens and where demand reductions can create the greatest value. New large loads, including data centers, should also help fund incremental, utility-directed efficiency and demand-response investments. That can create verifiable capacity, support economic growth and protect existing customers from avoidable cost shifts.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities should use its current regulatory reviews to establish a stronger compact: utilities receive a stable path to make necessary investments and recover legitimate costs; customers receive transparency, performance standards, phased bill impacts and expanded tools to lower their usage.
New Jersey is in the middle of the regulatory conversations that will set the terms for the next decade of its electric system. Addressing affordability right does not mean spending less on the grid. It means spending on the right things, in the right sequence, with the results measured openly. That is how affordability and reliability stop being framed as trade-offs and start being delivered together.
Paula Glover is the president of Alliance to Save Energy
