Trenton Asked Utilities to Pause Rate Hikes. PSE&G Just Told Wall Street It's Filing a New One.

On January 20, 2026, her first day in office, Governor Mikie Sherrill signed two executive orders declaring what her administration called a state of emergency on utility costs. Executive Order No. 1 directed the Board of Public Utilities to consider "a pause, abeyance, or modification of the schedule governing any proceedings in which electric distribution utilities seek approvals for rate increases or cost recoveries, to the extent permitted by law." It was, by any reasonable reading, a request aimed squarely at slowing down exactly the kind of filing that raises your electric bill.

Nine months later, on its August 4, 2026 earnings call, PSEG — the parent company of PSE&G, New Jersey's largest utility — told investors it now plans to file a new electric base rate case with the BPU by the end of this year. Earlier than it had to. PSE&G's last base rate case, settled in October 2024, didn't require another filing until "no later than 2029." The company is moving three years ahead of schedule.

My name is CJ Smith. I own Solar 4 Heroes. I write these posts because I think homeowners deserve the plain version of what's happening to their bills, not the version that's easiest to announce in a press release. This week's plain version is: the state asked utilities to slow down, and the state's biggest one just told Wall Street it's speeding up. Here's how those two things actually fit together, and what it means for your bill.

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What Executive Order 1 Actually Did — and Didn't Do

It's worth being precise here, because "rate freeze" became the shorthand in a lot of early coverage, and that shorthand oversells what the order requires.

EO1 did three concrete things: it directed the BPU to consider pausing or modifying the schedule for rate-increase proceedings "to the extent permitted by law" — a request, not a binding freeze, since the BPU operates under its own statutory review timelines. It directed the Board to offset upcoming increases with bill credits, echoing the roughly $100 credit issued to households in 2025, which covered only part of that year's roughly 20% rate hike. And it ordered a study, due within 180 days, on modernizing the traditional utility business model. The BPU's consultant, E3, delivered that Phase 1 Study on July 15, 2026, and the Board has since set up two stakeholder working groups — one on goals and metrics, one on technical considerations — meeting through the fall and winter of 2026.

Executive Order 2, signed the same day, is a different tool aimed at a different problem: it invokes New Jersey's Disaster Control Act to accelerate approvals for new generation — solar and battery storage in the short term, nuclear power over the long term — on the theory that more supply on the grid eventually eases the price pressure driving bills up in the first place.

Neither order compels a utility to withdraw or delay a rate case it hasn't filed yet. That distinction matters for what comes next.

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What PSE&G Told Investors

PSEG's own numbers explain the timing. The company's regulated utility rate base — the asset base on which it earns a return and recovers costs from customers — grew from roughly $34 billion at the end of 2024 to roughly $36 billion at the end of 2025, and PSEG has guided to 6–7.5% annual rate base growth going forward. That's funding a five-year capital plan, announced with the company's full-year 2025 results on February 26, 2026, of $24–28 billion through 2030, including $22.5–25.5 billion in regulated investment — roughly $4.2 billion of it in 2026 alone, covering gas main replacement, grid modernization, and storm-hardening work.

On the August earnings call, PSEG's finance leadership said that pace of spending, combined with fewer of the smaller infrastructure-tracker programs that allow for incremental cost recovery between full cases, made a new base rate case the more practical path — and that filing by year-end 2026 made more sense than waiting. As of this week, PSE&G has not filed the case, and no requested dollar figure or specific effective date has been made public. What's public is the intent and the timeline it's targeting.

Sources: New Jersey Governor's Office, PSEG 2025 full-year and Q2 2026 earnings materials and SEC filings, NJ BPU public notices.

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Don't Confuse This With PSE&G's October FERC Filing

One more thing worth separating out, because it's easy to conflate. On October 15, 2026, PSE&G filed its annual formula-rate update with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — a routine, recurring true-up of transmission charges that happens every year, posted for review with a virtual open meeting scheduled for November 10 (RSVPs due November 3). That's a smaller, ongoing mechanism and a different regulator than the base rate case PSEG flagged for the NJ Board of Public Utilities. I mention it only because both involve PSE&G and both involve the word "rate," and I'd rather you know the difference than assume they're the same filing.

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Why Your Bill Has Two Separate Levers — and EO1 Only Reaches One of Them

This is the part that gets lost in the back-and-forth over "freeze" headlines. Your electric bill is really two bills stapled together.

Supply is what you pay for the electricity itself. In New Jersey, that's set through an annual auction — Basic Generation Service — shaped heavily by PJM Interconnection's regional capacity market. That auction already ran for this cycle: the BPU certified results in February 2026 for supply beginning June 1, 2026, and PSE&G customers actually saw a small decrease (-1.8%) while JCP&L (+1.6%) and Atlantic City Electric (+0.11%) saw small increases. EO2's push for more in-state generation is aimed at this side of the bill, over time.

Distribution is what you pay for the poles, wires, substations, and gas mains that deliver that electricity — and for the utility's return on the capital it spends building and maintaining them. That's set through base rate cases at the BPU, reviewed over several months with input from the Division of Rate Counsel and other parties before the BPU approves a final number, typically lower than what's originally requested. This is exactly the kind of proceeding EO1 asked the BPU to consider pausing the schedule on — and it's exactly the kind of proceeding PSE&G just told investors it intends to file.

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What This Means If You're Weighing Solar Right Now

I'm not going to tell you a rate case that hasn't even been filed yet is going to add a specific dollar amount to your bill — nobody honest can say that yet, and I won't pretend otherwise. The BPU review process, once PSE&G files, will likely run well into 2027 before any new distribution rate takes effect, with Rate Counsel and other parties pushing to reduce whatever PSE&G initially requests, the way they do in every case.

What I can tell you is the pattern: utility capital spending in New Jersey has been climbing for years, rate base keeps growing, and base rate cases are how that spending gets recovered from the people on the grid. A pause on a proceeding's schedule doesn't change the underlying math of what a $24–28 billion capital plan needs to recover. It can slow the clock. It doesn't erase the bill.

A solar loan with $0 down and a fixed monthly payment sidesteps that question entirely for the portion of your usage your panels cover. It doesn't move when PJM's capacity auction clears high, and it doesn't move when a base rate case — whenever it's filed, whatever the BPU eventually approves — takes effect. New Jersey's incentive stack remains solid heading into this filing: net metering credits your excess production at the full retail rate, the SuSI/ADI incentive currently pays in the neighborhood of $76–77 per megawatt-hour for newly registered residential systems over a 15-year term (a step-down from $85, by design, as more homeowners enroll), and the state's sales and property tax exemptions on solar equipment remain automatic.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Has PSE&G actually filed its new base rate case yet?

Not as of this week. PSEG told investors on its August 4, 2026 earnings call that PSE&G anticipates filing by year-end 2026 — earlier than the "no later than 2029" deadline from its October 2024 settlement. No filing date or requested dollar amount has been made public yet.

Did Governor Sherrill's executive order freeze NJ electric rates?

Not exactly. Executive Order 1, signed January 20, 2026, asked the BPU to consider pausing or modifying the schedule of rate-increase proceedings "to the extent permitted by law," and directed the Board to offset increases with bill credits. It's a directive to consider slowing things down and softening the impact, not a binding freeze that prevents utilities from filing new cases.

Will PSE&G's new base rate case raise my bill?

It's too early to say by how much. PSE&G hasn't filed yet, and when it does, the BPU review — with input from the Division of Rate Counsel — typically takes several months and often results in a lower increase than what was originally requested. But the pattern across New Jersey utilities in recent years has consistently run toward higher distribution costs, not lower ones.

What's the difference between PSE&G's October 2026 FERC filing and its planned NJ base rate case?

They're unrelated proceedings with different regulators. The October 15, 2026 filing is a routine annual transmission formula-rate true-up with FERC. The base rate case PSEG flagged on its August earnings call would be filed with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and would address distribution rates — the cost of delivering power to your home, not transmitting it regionally.

Does solar protect me from a base rate case the way it protects me from a BGS auction increase?

Indirectly, but reliably. A solar loan payment is fixed at signing regardless of what the BPU eventually approves in any proceeding. Net metering credits the electricity your system produces at the full retail rate — which includes both the supply and distribution components of your bill — so when either side goes up, the value of what your panels offset goes up with it, while your loan payment doesn't move.

What are New Jersey's solar incentives as of fall 2026?

Net metering at the full retail rate, the SuSI/ADI incentive currently around $76–77 per megawatt-hour for newly registered residential systems over 15 years, and automatic state sales and property tax exemptions on solar equipment. The federal 30% residential tax credit expired at the end of 2025 for direct cash or loan purchases but remains available through certain lease and PPA financing structures.

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The Honest Bottom Line

I don't think PSE&G is doing anything underhanded here. A utility spending $4+ billion a year on infrastructure has to recover that cost somewhere, and a base rate case is the normal, regulated mechanism for doing it — it's not a backroom maneuver, it's a public filing that Rate Counsel and other parties will scrutinize for months. I also don't think Governor Sherrill's executive orders were empty gestures — bill credits are real money, and a serious look at New Jersey's utility business model is worth having.

What I do think is worth saying plainly: a request to consider pausing a schedule and a company's own decision to accelerate a filing are not the same force, and right now the second one is moving faster than the first. If you're a PSE&G customer who's been waiting to see how this plays out before deciding on solar, I'd rather tell you what I actually know than what sounds reassuring. What I know is that the capital plan is public, the rate base is growing, and the filing is coming. What locks in regardless of how that filing turns out is a fixed loan payment and a system you own.

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Solar 4 Heroes serves homeowners across CT, DE, FL, MA, MD, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, and VA. Call us at (856) 308-5144 or reach out at cj@solar4heroes.com.