Energy Design Assistance for Trade Partners

Start early in the design process to help your customers build in energy efficiency. Our Energy Design Assistance (EDA) program, by ConservationWise from Xcel Energy^SM, is free for your customers.

Summary

• Energy Design Assistance program overview 
• New construction, additions or major renovations
• Projects 15,000 sq. ft. or more
• Special incentives for Multifamily Affordable Housing projects .

Program Notes

Custom Consulting helps you meet LEED Optimized Energy Performance Points requirement.

The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green building rating system is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

While you may be familiar with the U.S. Green Buildings Council LEED program, you may not realize that our EDA program can help meet the July 2007 LEED requirement for two “Optimized Energy Performance points.”

Custom Consulting, our EDA offering for buildings 50,000 square feet and larger, uses a DOE2 model to determine energy savings over Minnesota State Code.  For registered LEED projects, we can enhance the DOE2 model we already need to make and create the appropriate base for LEED calculations. This way the model can calculate energy points for LEED. 

This modeling is free with participation in EDA Custom Consulting. The only extra requirement is that your client must be registered with USGBC as trying for LEED certification. Call us early in the design phase to take advantage of EDA and free LEED energy point calculations

Quick tips and information for trade partners

When is a good time to begin EDA?

What is the design team agreement?

On an Energy Design Assistance – Custom Consulting project, this is an agreement between Xcel Energy and one or more members of the design team. The agreement is required so Xcel Energy can reimburse the design team for participating in the EDA – Custom Consulting process on behalf of the owner. Typically the architect signs the design team agreement and then pays the engineering firm(s) on the team. However, Xcel Energy is willing to sign multiple design team agreements on a single project so each entity on the project is paid independently. The only requirement is that Xcel Energy does not pay out more than the “not to exceed” amount detailed on page 2 of the agreement.

Only projects going through our Custom Consulting process are eligible for this additional funding opportunity.

Rebate applications and guidelines

• Anyone involved in the project can submit an application. Download the EDA application (being sure to complete ALL information on pages 1, 3 and 4) or the Multifamily Housing application.

Resources

• LEED - Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design from the U.S. Green Buildings Council
• Information on the MN State Energy Code
• The Weidt Group www.twgi.com

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