Thinking Green: Existing Facilities Programs

At the Salon by the USGBC “High Performance Building Salon: Climate Change in New York” a lot of interesting topics came up; the one that I want to share is the existence of NYSERDA’s “Existing Facilities Program” and the “Flexible Technical Assistance or Flex Tech”. In the Existing Facilities program NYSERDA will work with you on auditing the following for free:

• Lighting
• HVAC
• Commercial Refrigerant & Commercial Kitchen Equipment and Washers
• Gas Efficiency
• Chillers, Motors, Interval Meters & Variable Frequency Drives

From there applicants can receive incentives ($/unit) for pre-qualified energy-efficiency and conservation measures. Projects can receive up to $30,000 through pre-qualified incentives. For national fuel gas, pre-qualified incentives are limited to a cap of $25,000. Also, the cost savings are then passed on to the client in other incentives, for example, in electricity, if all requirements are met and the client’s electric company is a Con Edison, (normal payment to Con Ed is $0.19 kWh), $0.16 would be covered by the incentive and the client would pay the rest, these would create great cost savings for the facility.

For more information cut and paste this link or go to my links:
http://www.nyserda.org/programs/Existing_facilities/default.html

The Flex Tech program is for Customers with electric utility bills less than $75,000 annually that may be eligible for the energy Audit Program which provides low-cost, walk-through energy audits. This program is for New York State (NYS) industrial and commercial facilities, State and local governments, not-for-profit and private institutions, public and private K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and health care facilities.

For more info on this program go to: www.nyserda.org/programs/flextech.asp

If your client is in LIPA territory you might have better options. LIPA is paying 100% for the energy model, 50% of commissioning and up to 25K for getting LEED points. It is good to look at what your electric company will cover for energy savings as well as it depends on you location and who is your provider.


I encourage more involvement in the USGBC salons as you can get great information like this.