Business FLEXmarket

$1k Bonus Payments for New Projects!!!

More Information

For a limited time, BayREN Business is offering Aggregators a $1,000 bonus for each qualifying project in Marin, Napa, San Francisco, Solano, and Sonoma Counties.

Total Budget: $50,000

Deadline: November 17, 2023 (or until the budget is exhausted)

The budget for the project bonuses comes from the program marketing budget. As such, there is no impact on the total amount of remaining incentive funds for the BayREN Business FLEXmarket.

What is BayREN Business FLEXmarket?

The BayREN Business FLEXmarket is focused on helping small, Hard-to-Reach business owners cut energy costs and put savings back into their businesses.

BayREN's incentive model is simple: When customers save energy, contractors earn incentives. Contractors can make $1,000's more per year with higher incentives available for projects serving small businesses.

Why BayREN Business FLEXmarket?

Upfront payment. 20% of your forecasted incentive is paid upfront for projects installed.
Measure agnostic. You decide what to install and how much energy it will save, and we'll estimate your incentive at enrollment.
Lucrative incentives. Because payments are based on actual savings, you can earn $1,000s more than traditional rebate programs.
Expanded customer base. Use incentive dollars to make competitive offers to typically out-of-reach customers across the Bay Area.
Customer referrals. Interested customers referred to contractors.

What does the 3.5x multiplier look like for incentives?

Use the tool below to estimate the value of your projects

Project Value Estimator

Serving Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, and Sonoma counties.

Sign FPA and T's and C's

Program Budget (Live)

How much money has been reserved? How much money is left?

Incentives Remaining: this number is the total number of reserved incentives subtracted from the total program incentive budget ($3,000,000).

Please note: The Incentives Remaining does not factor in the Pipeline of Incentives Submitted. The Pipeline of Incentives Submitted is the estimated total of incentives for submitted projects under review. There is no guarantee of enrollment for any project submitted but aggregators should factor the Pipeline of Incentives Submitted into urgency of submitted projects to BayREN.

Eligibility

What types of businesses and projects are eligible?

Eligibility Tool

Project Eligibility
Aggregators should be well versed in the project eligibility parameters upon project submission.

Hard-to-Reach (HTR) Requirement: For the 2023 program year, all projects are required to be HTR to qualify for BayREN Business FLEXmarket.

Location: Projects have to be located within one of the Bay Area Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, or Sonoma.

Project Type: Incentive are for businesses: non-residential, non-government buildings, facilities, sites, places, and spaces occupied by organizations and entities whose purposes are to engage in professional and commercial activities. The Program does not accept home offices, agricultural, aviation, industrial, mining, sanitation, parking-only (lots and garages), and storage facilities, or multifamily common areas.

BayREN Influence: must not be currently enrolled either as a lead or project in another ratepayer funding energy efficiency program including the Market Access Program, other FLEXmarkets, and On-Bill Financing Program.

Meter Eligibility
Meter-based eligibility checks will be provided through a public-facing tool in the near future. For the program re-launch, meter-based eligibility checks will be provided by Recurve using data provided by PG&E.

Consumption Threshold: Annual energy use of ≤150,000 kWh and ≤50,000 therms, based on the combined usage from all meters that serve the project site.

Model Fit: Baseline weather normalization model fit needs to be < 1.0 Coefficient of the Variation of the Root Mean Square Error9 (CVRMSE).

Consistent Data: Meters affected by the project scope must have twelve (12) consecutive months of energy usage data.

Meter Sector: The sector assigned to each meter must be Commercial. Industrial, Agricultural, or Residential are not allowed.

No Solar on-site: Buildings with Solar are not allowed to participate
Double Dipping: No meter may be associated with an existing energy efficiency Project within the last 12 months.

Utility Service Provider: Project site must receive electric distribution and natural gas services from PG&E. Participants may receive electricity supply from PG&E or a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA).

Hard-to-Reach (HTR) Eligibility
All eligible businesses must be HTR, which is determined by a collective score of at least 3 points from the table below. HTR-eligibility will be participant-certified for language, number of employees, facility, and location in a DAC. HTR criteria are:

Disadvantaged Community (DAC) Map

Target Audience

Who is this program looking to enroll?

The BayREN Business FLEXmarket is intended to serve small HTR businesses that are typically overlooked during the sales process based on their lower-than-average savings potential and higher-than-average acquisition costs. The Program is designed with incentives available to make these often ignored customer segments more financially viable.

During the soft launch of the BayREN Business FLEXmarket in the Fall of 2022, a large volume of projects was submitted that did not meet the intent of the program. As such, the fully launched version of the program features new rules to exclude projects that very easily fit other energy efficiency programs - i.e. parking lot-only projects, industrial sites, indoor agriculture, etc. are not allowed.

Please view the newly released eligibility section highlighting the sectors and types of projects that are not eligible for the BayREN Business FLEXmarket.

Authority on Eligibility

Who determines the eligibility of my project?

Based on BayREN’s status to provide a CPUC-authorized Energy Efficiency program as a complement to programs that are offered by PG&E and overlapping Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), project enrollment pathways must abide by various Joint Cooperation Memos and other parameters. As such, the BayREN team has the final authority to determine Aggregator, project, and measure, eligibility, as well as reasonableness of Aggregator savings forecasts.

Recurve does not determine any eligibility parameters of a project enrolling into the BayREN Business FLEXmarket.

FAQs & Aggregator Resources

FAQs & Aggregator Resources Provided by BayREN

Aggregator Resources

Aggregators can use the tools listed on BayREN's website to assist them when creating their forecasted energy savings for the BayREN Business FLEXmarket.

BayREN Business: Resources for Aggregators | Bay Area Regional Energy Network

How It Works

The BayREN Business FLEXmarket operates differently than other FLEXmarkets and has very specific processes that need to be followed. Please pay close attention to the steps listed below. Projects that do not follow the process will not be accepted.

Sign FPA & Terms and Conditions

Participating Aggregators MUST sign both the Flexibility Purchase Agreement and associated Terms and Conditions for the BayREN Business Program PRIOR to submitting a project.

Any project submitted prior to completing FPA and Ts & Cs will be ruled ineligible.

Sign the FPA

Submit Projects for Review & Reservation

Submit your project for an Eligibility Review by BayREN. If your project is deemed as eligible by BayREN and it meets all required criteria upon submission, Recurve will issue a Reservation Letter for the project.

Projects are not allowed to be completed prior to reservation. If it is found that a project has been completed prior to reservation, it will be expelled from the program and no incentives will be paid.

Submit a Project

Build Your Reserved Project

Once you have received your Project Reservation Letter, you are free to build your project. Your Reservation Letter is valid for 90 days and may be extended upon request.

If your project is completed prior to receiving a Reservation Letter, it will be removed from the program.

Program Documents

Submit Project Completion Agreement

After your project is finished, submit all required documents through the Project Completion and Start Tracking portal. The required documentation can be found in the Market Documents Section below.

Completed final documents are due within 30 days of your project's conclusion. If it takes >30 days to submit completed paperwork, your savings tracking will only begin once final documentation has been received, not the day your project completes.

Project Completion Form

Engineering Review and Site Inspection

As part of BayREN's project Review, both Third Party Engineering Reviews and Site Inspections will be deployed. A Third Party Engineering Review will be required if forecasted energy savings is ≥15% of annual utility consumption. A site inspection for both pre-enrollment and post-installment will be conducted on a sampling basis and upon request from BayREN.

Third Party Engineering Reviews and Site Inspections will be conducted by the BayREN Business Perfomance Advisor (BPA). The BayREN BPA can be contacted at bayrenbpa@sfgov.org

Market Documents

Implementation Plan, Measurement & Verification (M&V) Plan, Program Manual

The latest version of the Program Documents (Implementation Plan, M&V Plan, and Program Manual) can be found on the CEDARS website. You can also view previous Plan Version through CEDARS.

BayREN Business FLEXmarket regulatory page on CEDARS

Data Authorization Form

Site Access Agreement

Project Completion Agreement

Scope of Work Guidance

A Scope of Work must be submitted upon your initial project proposal submission as well as during the final step of Project Completion and Start Tracking. This is so the Program can review your project to verify estimated savings as described in the scope of the project. The listed measure types in the scope will impact the assigned Effective Useful Life (EUL) of your project.

Your Scope of Work will also be used during an Third Party Engineering Review or Site Quality Inspections, if they are deemed as necessary for your project. Third Party Engineering Review and Site Quality Inspections are designed to verify reasonableness of your savings estimates and ensure work completed matches what was proposed, respectively.

In your Scope of Work, please make it clear for any measure, electric or gas, that you are installing:

What you are installing
How many units are being installed
What the total savings will be