Focus on Energy - Farm Multi-Project Bonus (WPS Customers Only)

February 02, 2011

Summary

Focus on Energy and Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) have teamed up to provide bonus incentives for homes with farms or greenhouses located on the same property. In addition to the incentives described below, WPS customers earn bonus incentives for installing 2-5 unrelated projects. Customers that install 2 projects receive a 25% bonus; 3 projects earn a 50% bonus; 4 projects earn a 75% bonus; 5 projects earn a 100% bonus. The bonus cannot exceed $25,000 Focus on Energy offers financial incentives to eligible business customers who install many types of qualifying energy efficient equipment. The program offers both prescriptive incentives for a variety of specific improvements and custom incentives for improvements that do not fall under any of the prescriptive listings. Prescriptive measures generally apply on to existing buildings; new construction projects are addressed in a separate category. In order to receive awards participants must be a customer of a participating electric or gas utility (i.e., participating gas utility for gas incentives and participating electric utility for electricity incentives). Below is a list of equipment categories for which prescriptive incentives are available, with short descriptions of some eligible technologies. Interested parties should see the program website for incentive amounts and more detailed qualifying criteria.

• Agribusiness: Dairy and livestock, lighting, greenhouse, irrigation systems.
• Commercial Refrigeration: Various types of related equipment, including fan motors, heater controls, LED lighting, occupancy sensors, and climate controls.
• Compressed Air System Audit and Leak Survey Incentive: Audits, leak surveys, air compressors equipped with variable speed drives.
• Food Service Incentives: Various Energy Star and other qualifying food service equipment, ice machines, and commercial dishwashers.
• Industrial: Repulper rotors and extraction plates, pressure screen rotors, pump system studies for pulp and paper, radiant heater tubes, and radiant heater bands for plastic.
• Information Systems: Server virtualization, PC network controls, thin client conversion.
• HVAC: Boilers, furnaces, heat pumps, equipment controls, energy recovery ventilators, chillers, and certain equipment service buydowns.
• Lighting Incentives: Qualifying lighting fixtures, lamps, occupancy sensors, etc. Whole building lighting for schools and government facilities.
• Specialty Measure Incentives: Specific measures such as guest room energy management controls, vending machines, water heaters, and truck loading dock equipment.
• Variable Frequency Drive Incentives: VFD retrofits in various applications.
• Whole Building Systems: Building tune-up, retro-commissioning, whole-building lighting for schools and government facilities.
• Competitive Incentives: Vary, current offering for compressed air studies.

Custom incentives are available for measures not covered by prescriptive incentives. To obtain custom incentives, interested applicants must work with a Focus on Energy adviser to obtain pre-approval for projects prior to purchasing and installing the equipment. The program website contains a general list of eligible custom improvements broken down by economic sector. All equipment must be new, and existing equipment must be removed (and preferably recycled.) Projects with less than a one-and-a-half-year payback are not eligible, and projects with payback of 10 years or longer may be subject to case-by-case eligibility determinations. Custom electricity incentives are calculated based on first-year energy savings as follows:

• $0.03/kilowatt-hour and $100/peak kilowatt for electric savings for Tier 1* technologies
• $0.045/kilowatt-hour and $150/peak kilowatt for Tier 2* technologies

Custom heating incentive levels are also calculated based on first-year energy savings:

• $0.30/therm for Tier 1* technologies
• $0.45/therm for Tier 2* technologies

Custom incentives are limited to $250,000 per project, and may cover no more than 30% of the project costs. Overall, an individual customer is limited to $500,000 in incentives during any program year. *For definitions of Tier 1 and Tier 2 technologies and projects, see the program website.