Program/s: EmPower+, Residential Energy Assessments, Comfort Home To: Participating Contractors Summary: Monthly Contractor Update Contact with Questions:[email protected]
NYSERDA Single Family Programs Update Friday, October 4, 2024 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. ET Webinar number: 2534 351 3591 Event password: Energy 1
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, please click here.
All webinars are recorded and links to the recordings are available on the Contractor Support site.
To: Residential Contractors From: Residential Financing Team Programs: EmPower+, Comfort Home, Residential Energy Assessment Program Summary: GJGNY Residential Financing – Interest Rate Changes Questions: [email protected]
Dear Participating Contractors:
NYSERDA will be making the following updates to the GJGNY Financing Program’s interest rates to support the program’s objectives of increasing efficiency, reducing cost, and making GJGNY residential loans more accessible to low-income households and disadvantaged communities.
1) Change eligibility for the lower rates to only customers that meet the New York State Disadvantaged Community Criteria or reside in a US Census Block Group identified as where 50% or more of the population of the group has a household income of less than or equal to 80% Area Median Income (AMI) (“Designated Areas”). Customers living outside these Designated Areas, and who can provide household income documentation to show their household income is less than or equal to 80% AMI, would also be eligible for the lower rates. Customers not in a Designated Area or unable to show household income of lower or equal to 80% AMI would only be eligible for the higher interest rates. NYSERDA will update the web based geographic eligibility map to reflect this change. We anticipate this update to be completed by November 1, 2024.
2) Recalibrate interest rates to better reflect market conditions. Interest rates for customers within a Designated Area or with household income of less than or equal to 80% AMI will increase from 3.99% to 4.5%, with the option of a 0.5% discount for Smart Energy Loans (SEL) when using automatic payments (ACH). Similarly, for customers outside of Designated Area or with household income greater than 80% AMI, interest rates will increase from 7.49% to 8.00%, with the option of a 0.5% discount for SEL when using ACH.
3) Remove the 0.5% interest rate discount for On-Bill Recovery (OBR) loans. OBR loans have several fees associated with filing documents and title searches, which up until now had been paid by the Program. To date, the Program has incurred fee expenses of over $6.7 million. Removing the 0.5% discount will allow GJGNY to offset some of these expenses and fund additional loans.
These changes will come into effect on November 1, 2024, and will apply to all loan applications received on or after this date.
New Rates Effective for Applications Received On or After November 1, 2024
Programs: EmPower+ To: Participating Contractors, Hubs Summary: IRA and EmPower+ Funding Flow Charts Questions: Please contact Contractor Support at 1-800-284-9069.
NYSERDA has produced new flow charts to help Contractors and Regional Clean Energy Hubs identify the IRA and EmPower+ funding a customer could be eligible for as well as helping guide the process for determining what measures a house may be available for installation.
These guides are meant for use by the contractors and Hubs in educating their personnel and are not for public distribution or use in promotional materials. They can be found in Section 8 of the Program Manual on the contractor support site. These flow charts were discussed on the September 6th contractor check in webinar, a copy of the recording can be found here.
If there are any questions, please contact Contractor Support at 1-800-284-9069.
Some contractors are experiencing an error message when contacting the Contractor Support phone line as a participating contractor. This is being worked on and updates will be posted as they become available. As a temporary workaround for calling the support line, please select the either approved or past customer IVR option (option 2 when calling 800-284-9069).
Other communication channels are unaffected: Contractors may submit a case by emailing [email protected], clicking the ‘Submit a Case’ button on the homepage of the contractor support website, or start a messaging session using the Chat bubble on the bottom right of the contractor support website’s homepage. Thank you for your continued support and patience.
Program/s: EmPower+ To: Participating Contractors Summary: Building Airflow Standard Calculator Questions: Please contact Contractor Support at 1-800-284-9069.
In response to a recent suggestion from a program contractor, for EmPower+ Contractors using the Comfort Home Building Airflow Standard Calculator, an ACH50 calculation has been added to the tool. The inputs remain the same as the prior version; however, the calculated values now include the number of air changes per hour at 50 pascals. We hope that you find this addition helpful. A copy of the tool can be found on the contractor support site, in Section 8 of the Program Manual.