NJ Electric Rate Freeze: What It Does (and Doesn't Do) for Bills

After several years of steep electricity price increases, New Jerseyans are getting a bit of welcome news.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities voted to keep electricity rates roughly level for the state’s four regulated electric utilities, according to the New Jersey Monitor. That’s real relief after a brutal couple of years. But if you’ve been watching your bill climb and hoping this is the turnaround, here’s the part few people are saying out loud: the thing driving your rates up is still broken.

Let’s walk through what changed, why the relief is likely short-lived, and what actually puts you back in control.

What the new rate changes actually do

Think of your electric bill as a stack of separate charges. Some cover the power itself. Others cover the poles, wires, and state programs. Regulators can’t touch the price of the power much, but they can trim those other charges to cancel out increases.

That’s exactly what the Board of Public Utilities (BPU) did. Board president Ben Hertz-Shargel said the moves add up to “no net increase in electricity rates and a slight decrease in gas rates.”

In plain numbers:

• Rockland Electric customers save about 67 cents a month.
• Atlantic City Electric customers save 5 cents a month.
• Jersey Central Power & Light customers save 8 cents a month.
• PSE&G electric bills were set to rise 2 cents, but state offsets erased it.

Gas customers did better, with Elizabethtown bills dropping $18.16 a month. On the electric side, though, “level” is the whole headline. Bills are hardly going down, they’re staying put. And it’s unclear for how long.

Why this isn’t a long-term fix

Here’s the problem the freeze doesn’t solve. A substantial portion of the state’s electricity prices gets set at a regional auction run by PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for New Jersey and 12 other states.

PJM runs a “capacity auction” to pay power plants to be available when demand peaks. When those auction prices spike, your bill follows. And they’ve spiked hard. Back in February 2025, residential customers faced bill hikes of up to 20% in one year, driven mostly by PJM’s record capacity prices.

Why? Two things at once. Demand is surging, largely from data centers eating up huge amounts of power. And supply isn’t keeping up, because new power plants get stuck for years waiting to connect to the grid. The state’s own rate counsel blamed most of the increase on “PJM’s failure to fix its market rules or timely interconnect new generation supply.”

Simply put: the BPU can shuffle the smaller charges to hold your bill flat this year. It can’t fix a regional auction that keeps raising the biggest charge. That’s why the freeze is a patch, not a cure.

Why rooftop solar beats waiting on the utility

So what do you actually control? The price you pay per kilowatt-hour. Rooftop solar lets you generate your own power instead of buying every unit at whatever price the next PJM auction spits out.

New Jersey happens to be one of the better states for it, for two reasons:

• Net metering. This is the rule that lets you send extra solar power back to the grid and get billed only for your net usage. Your meter effectively runs backward when you overproduce. The grid becomes your battery. New Jersey’s net metering remains one of the stronger policies in the country.
• The SuSI program. Short for Successor Solar Incentive, SuSI pays you for the clean energy your panels produce through SREC-II credits, on top of the savings on your bill. It’s a state-backed payment for generating your own power.

A rooftop system is a hedge against rising energy costs, because once it’s paid off, your production cost per kilowatt-hour is locked in. PJM’s auction doesn’t get a vote on it.

Solar.com’s Advice: A held-flat bill is nice. But it’s still a bill set by forces you can’t influence. If you’d rather stop guessing what the next auction does to your rates, get a solar price for your roof and see exactly how much you’ll pay for electricity over the next 25 years.