New Jersey Now Requires Solar or a Battery to Qualify for Its Commercial EV Charging Grant

The NJEDA approved changes to two grant programs that pay for commercial electrical work, announced August 26, 2026. If you own a building or run a fleet in Bergen, Hudson, Essex or Passaic county: the money is still there, it got bigger per project, and it now carries a condition that changes how the job has to be designed.

Both programs are closed to new applications right now. That is not bad news. It is the only unhurried window you will get to do the engineering before a clock starts.

Chargers by themselves no longer qualify for Take Charge

Take Charge uses Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative funds to help commercial organizations pay for EV charging infrastructure for private fleets. Under the approved changes, the minimum grant award per project rises from $50,000 to $100,000, and installing on-site renewable energy generation or energy storage is now required as part of the proposed project scope (NJEDA).

What those two terms actually mean

The program uses language worth pinning down before anyone budgets against it.

On-site renewable energy generation means you make your own power at the building. In practice that means solar panels, on the roof or over the parking.

Energy storage means equipment that holds electricity and releases it later. On a charging project that is a battery system, typically enclosed cabinets on a concrete pad near the electrical gear. It has nothing to do with storage space or square footage, which is how the word usually gets used in a building. Other kinds of energy storage do exist, including thermal storage on a cooling job, and we have not confirmed with the NJEDA which of those it will accept. If your plan depends on something other than a battery, get that answer in writing first.

The requirement reads as generation or storage, so solar alone or a battery alone satisfies it. You do not need both.

Why that changes the budget

A bank of chargers on a fleet yard used to be a complete Take Charge project. Not anymore. The program now expects generation or a battery in the scope, specifically energy storage that helps manage power demand for the chargers (NJEDA Take Charge). That changes the electrical drawings, it changes the study of how much power your building can safely carry, and it usually adds an outdoor pad and a fire clearance you did not have to think about before.

The rest of the structure: a $25 million pilot, awards capped at $5 million per EIN, covering 50 percent of eligible project costs (NJEDA Take Charge). EIN is the federal tax ID number for the business, so a group of related buildings under one tax ID shares a single cap rather than each getting its own.

Two bonuses sit on top of that 50 percent: another 5 percent for projects in an Overburdened Community or a formally designated Adjacent Community, and another 5 percent for small business applicants (NJEDA Take Charge). Overburdened Community is a specific state designation mapped down to the census block group, not a general description, so it is a lookup by street address and not a judgment call.

You can combine a utility incentive with this one, which the programs call stacking, but the NJEDA share plus the utility share cannot exceed 90 percent of eligible costs. You cannot combine it with another state charging incentive from DEP, BPU or DOT, or with a federal one.

One caveat. That same page still lists a $50,000 minimum in its Grant Award section while describing awards from $100,000 up (NJEDA Take Charge). It is mid-update. Confirm the minimum with takecharge@njeda.gov before sizing a project around it.

NJ Cool Phase 2 wants the heating system touched too

NJ Cool pays 50 percent of eligible costs on building retrofits that reduce emissions, up to $1 million per project and $3 million per EIN, against a $25 million Phase 2 budget, with a $100,000 minimum eligible project cost and a non-refundable $500 application fee per project (NJEDA NJ Cool). Phase 2 adds two requirements: updating the building's existing heating or cooling system, and installing on-site renewable generation or energy storage (NJEDA).

There is a bonus worth chasing. The program sets a floor of converting 75 percent of a building's fuel-burning space heating, meaning the gas or oil that heats the space, over to heat that burns nothing, typically electric heat pumps. Go all the way to 100 percent and reimbursement rises from 50 percent of eligible costs to 60 percent (NJEDA NJ Cool). At the $1 million cap that difference is real money, and whether you can reach it is a calculation about the building's actual heating load, not a sales question.

Eligibility is broad: commercial owners or tenants in Property Class 4A buildings, which is New Jersey's tax classification for commercial property, plus industrial and institutional buildings including hospitals, public schools, higher education, municipal utilities and local government. State government entities do not qualify (NJEDA NJ Cool).

Three things that actually cost owners the grant

1. Starting work before approval. NJ Cool states that the program will not provide reimbursement for costs already incurred prior to application approval (NJEDA NJ Cool). Order gear early to beat a lead time and you can spend your way straight out of the grant.
2. The utility capacity clock. Take Charge gives you six months from application approval to produce one of three things: confirmation of how much power your existing electrical service can already carry, or a confirmed utility plan and schedule for adding more, or confirmation that the chargers will be fed from on-site generation (NJEDA Take Charge). That same package includes a financing plan carrying 15 percent contingency, and you then get 24 months from grant agreement to completion. Getting more power from the utility is the longest lead item on almost every charging job, and six months is not generous.
3. Prevailing wage and registration. Both programs require construction by contractors registered with the New Jersey Department of Labor as Public Works contractors, at prevailing wage, with affirmative action compliance, and Take Charge reserves the right to run site visits to confirm it (NJEDA Take Charge). That registration takes weeks to obtain and cannot be backdated, so ask every bidder for a registration number before you award, not after.

What the closed window is good for

We are an IBEW Local 164 signatory shop, so prevailing wage is already how we price work. The real obstacle is that both programs now require solar or a battery in the scope, sized against your actual service and load rather than picked off a shelf.

The useful work right now is a load study, which means measuring what your building actually draws today instead of adding up nameplate ratings, plus an honest look at how much more your existing service can carry. Those two numbers decide whether you need a service upgrade, and a service upgrade is what puts you on the utility's schedule instead of your own. Have them in hand before applications open and you are filling in blanks rather than starting from zero.

We will do that assessment and tell you plainly whether it pencils out, at no cost.

Details here are drawn from the NJEDA's August 26, 2026 announcement and the current Take Charge and NJ Cool program pages as of September 7, 2026. Neither program was accepting applications on that date. Whether a fuel-fired standby generator can satisfy the storage requirement is not addressed on either page and we have not confirmed it with the NJEDA. Award amounts, eligibility criteria, stacking rules and funding availability are set by the NJEDA and are subject to change. Verify current terms with the NJEDA at takecharge@njeda.gov for Take Charge or njcool@njeda.gov for NJ Cool before deciding.