More good solar news came out of New Jersey earlier this week as the North Jersey Media Group — which is comprised of several community newspapers including The Record and the Herald News — announced that it has partnered with KDC Solar to install a roughly 4.2-megawatt (MW) of solar energy system at its Rockaway, New Jersey printing facility.

KDC Solar is a Bedminster, N.J.-based builder, owner and operator of commercial solar energy systems. As such, KDC will own, install and maintain the  20,400-panel system and sell the energy back to the media group. Since the group is hosting the system, KDC will likely sell the group the solar energy at a reduced rate.

In a statement given to the PRNewswire, North Jersey Media Group President Stephen Borg called the solar energy system, “the next big step,” for a facility that has taken several other measures over the years in an effort to become more environmentally conscious. The group uses soy-based inks, prints its news on paper with the highest possible recycle content and uses a paper supplier with a zero-deforestation record, meaning no trees are chopped down in order for their newspaper to be published. Taking the next step with solar was only logical for Borg, who said every effort was made to make the system as large as possible:

“We used all the space available to install this solar facility including erecting car ports with panels on top.  The end result is almost fifty percent of our electricity needs will be met through the sun.”

Construction is expected to start early this year and be completed by late 2011. When it is completed, the system will churn out about 4.2 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of clean, solar energy each year — enough solar energy to power 600 average American homes during that same span. It will also be one of the single largest solar energy systems in all of New Jersey — quite the accomplishment when considering that New Jersey stands second among all states in terms of total installed solar energy capacity. Only California has more installed solar energy potential than the Garden State.