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BPI new certifications and Program requirements

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To: Contractors
Regarding Programs: All Residential Programs
Summary: BPI new certifications and Program requirements
Contact: Please reach out to your account manager

Building Performance Institute (BPI) will be replacing the BPI Building Analyst (BA) and BPI Envelope Professional certifications with the BPI Building Analyst Technician (BA-T) and the BPI Building Analyst Professional (BA-P) in early 2023.

Due to these changes, starting January 1, 2023, NYSERDA’s Single Family Residential Programs will continue to accept the BPI BA and Envelope certifications until the certification’s expiration date. When an individual’s certifications expire, they will be required to hold one of the BPI certifications listed in the program manual to perform energy assessments and BA-P will replace BPI Envelope as the requirement for a contractor to do building shell work.

BPI will be providing an additional overview of their certification changes on NYSERDA’s January 6th contractor call.

If you have any questions, please reach out to your account manager.

Survey – Cost Reductions for Home Energy Upgrades

To: Contractors
Regarding Programs: All Residential Programs
Summary: Survey – cost reductions for home energy upgrades
Contact: homeupgradecostsurvey@lbl.gov

Do you have knowledge on the costs of residential energy upgrade projects and ideas about how to reduce them? Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL)is conducting a paid survey to gather information from the residential renovation and construction industry on these topics. We are looking for responses from contractors, consultants, program managers, and others with expertise in these areas.

Survey participation details:

  • The survey asks you to indicate how likely you are to employ various cost reduction strategies in your home energy projects and to estimate how much they could save.
  • The survey should take approximately 15 minutes to complete.
  • If you are one of the first 250 respondents to complete the survey, you will be compensated with a $50 eGift card upon completion of the full survey.
  • Your responses to the survey questions will remain anonymous.

If you are interested in contributing to this research, please follow this link to the survey.

For information on LBNL’s recent home energy upgrade costs research, please visit the project website. You can also email us at homeupgradecostsurvey@lbl.gov. Please forward this information to others in your network who you think could contribute to this work.

Thank you for your consideration.

Geographically Eligible Territories

To: EmPower, AHP Contractors, HUBS
Regarding Programs: EmPower New York
Summary: Geographically Eligible Territories
Contact: If you have any questions, please reach out to your account manager or contact us at hpwes@nyserda.ny.gov.

In response to questions from stakeholders and participating contractors, NYSERDA is providing clarification on EmPower New York’s Geographically Eligible Territories:

  • Geographic Eligibility can only be used for determining income eligibility for single-family residences.
  • Two- to Four-unit buildings and Multifamily properties with five or more units are not eligible to be income qualified as geographically eligible and will need to provide alternate income documentation to determine program eligibility.

The following language has been added to Section 5.15a of the Program Manual.

Geographically Eligible Territories

As part of the Combined Residential Application, NYSERDA developed an income-eligibility tool to allow for low-income single-family households to qualify for Program incentives based on their location in geographically eligible territories where census data reports that 50% or more of the population of the Census Block Group have a household income that is below 250% of the federal poverty level.

If an applicant’s address is located within a geographically eligible territory, and is a single-family residence, they will be deemed eligible for EmPower and will not have to provide documentation of household income. An eligible single-family household can be owner occupied or occupied by a renter. Two- to Four-unit buildings and Multifamily properties with five or more units are not eligible to be income qualified as geographically eligible and will need to provide alternate income documentation to determine program eligibility.

An interactive map can be referenced on the EmPower Geo-eligibility Tool webpage, and shows the geographically eligible territories in blue. Enter an address in the search address box to determine if it is in a geographically eligible territory.

If you have any questions, please reach out to your account manager or contact us at hpwes@nyserda.ny.gov.

NYSERDA Single Family Programs Update

To: Contractors
Regarding Programs: EmPower New York & Assisted Home Performance
Summary: Monthly Contractor Check-in
Contact: hpwes@nyserda.ny.gov

NYSERDA Single Family Programs Update

Friday, December 2, 2022

8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. ET

Event number: 2599 433 7946

Event password: Energy1

All attendees must register prior to joining the event. This process will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar and provides each individual with a custom link to join the meeting. Please do not share your link with anyone. To register, click the link below:

December 2 – NYSERDA Single Family Programs Update Webinar Registration Link

All webinars are recorded and links to the recordings are available on the Contractor Support site.

NYSERDA will be reinstating the 120-day completion goal

To: Participating AHP and EmPower Contractors
Regarding Programs: AHP and EmPower New York
Summary: NYSERDA will be reinstating the 120-day completion goal.
Contact: support.residential@nyserda.ny.gov; Questions can also be addressed with your account manager

In March of 2020, in response to COVID-19 and the statewide work pause, NYSERDA suspended Program project deadlines. Following the return to work, contractors still faced scheduling conflicts and supply chain issues, so NYSERDA kept the completion deadline suspension in place. NYSERDA is looking to gradually reinstate project completion deadlines to ensure projects are closed out in a timely manner. Related to this, CLEAResult has been reaching out to contractors to have them prioritize their work in progress projects and close out any old projects that won’t be moving forward.

Starting January 1, 2023, the Program will reinstate the 120-day project completion goal. Please review the following dates for Project completion submission:

  • Projects started before January 1, 2022, will need to be completed by January 1, 2023.
  • Projects started before January 1, 2023, will need to be completed by May 1, 2023.
  • Projects started after January 1, 2023, should be completed within the 120-day period used in the past.

We understand that there may be instances where a project cannot be completed within the timeframes referenced above. Contractors should document in the project notes in Uplight if that is the case.

For any questions, please reach out to your account manager or support.residential@nyserda.ny.gov.