NOTE: Beginning September 21, 2015, NYSERDA is modifying the incentives available through the Existing Facilities Program for the rest of the program year 2015. The changes include i) eliminating the prescriptive incentives and ii) transition of performance based incentive from fixed incentive per kWh saved by geographic region by tiered incentive based on level of kWh saved. For more information, please see the notification filed by NYSERDA to the Department of Public Service.  

The NYSERDA Existing Facilities program merges the former Peak Load Reduction and Enhanced Commercial and Industrial Performance programs. The new program offers a broad array of different incentives to electricity and natural gas customers within the state that pay the System Benefits Charge (SBC). Energy service companies (ESCOs) that implement efficiency measures for eligible customers are likewise eligible. Both pre-qualified equipment rebates and performance based rebates are offered under this program. This summary is provided for performance-based incentive for the program, please visit Existing Building rebate program site for summary on rebate component of the program.

Projects with a simple payback greater than 18 years, or less than 1 year (or 6 months for manufacturing and data center projects) are not eligible for incentives.

Performance-based Incentives

This category of incentives is generally oriented towards large improvement projects. Performance incentives are available for electric efficiency, natural gas efficiency, energy storage, demand response, monitoring-based commissioning, and industrial and process efficiency (Industrial and Process Efficiency Program details). 

Performance based incentives are awarded as one-time payment based on expected first year savings offered by the particular improvement. Beginning September 2015, the incentives are offered as in a tiered approach modifying the previous incentive calculation based on different incentives based on geographic region. Under the new approach, the incentives are calculated by determining total percentage of energy savings and multiplying that by the incentive rate for that tier. Summary of incentives is provided in the table below: