IESO TO ALLOW THIRD PARTY FINANCING FOR LED RETROFIT PROJECTS INVOLVING SAVEONENERGY INCENTIVES

A great news coming from IESO and LDC’s across Ontario. Last week (week of Aug 28) at an Applicant Representative training session hosted by a major utility company, it was announced that IESO has sent an internal memo to LDC’s allowing for third party financing of LED Retrofit projects that also take advantage of saveONenergy rebates. In the past, participants to saveONenergy programs had to pay for any retrofit project in full in order to claim their rebates.

This has now changed. IESO will now allow incentives for third party financed projects. While official announcement and further details are awaited, this is certainly a good news and comes at a perfect time. LED’s have reached a point where technology has matured enough to adequately replace legacy lighting systems and cost has come down dramatically where ROI is many times less than a year. With that kind of returns, switching to LED’s has been a no brainier for a while now but having to come up with tens of thousands dollars or more is always a challenge for many businesses. While third party financing had been available but it meant that saveONenergy rebates weren’t available as per IESO rules. This usually meant that retrofit participants had to forgo either a financing option or incentives,

This would also be a welcome news for lenders and leasing companies that would have tremendous opportunities to provide services to a large client base. By partnering up with distributors and retrofit companies, lenders would be able to leverage the relationship that distributors and retrofit companies bring to table while helping them with finance programs for their clients. It’s a win-win and the industry had been waiting for this one for a while.