ARRA Energy Rebates

Business Case

The Energy Efficiency Rebate Program is funded by the Recovery Act and administered by the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME). The Recovery Act has provided $15 million in funding for this rebate program for citizens and business owners in the Commonwealth of Virginia who purchase energy efficient retrofit upgrades for their existing (not newly built) homes and businesses after June 25, 2009.

Solution

The ARRA Energy Rebate System is a turn-key solution to provide a variety of energy efficiency, appliance and renewable rebates to consumers - from storm doors to solar thermal systems.  Due to the anticipated high volume of rebate requests and in an effort to minimize the manpower required to process the requests, a web-based rebate request system was developed to support this Recovery Act program.

Based on lessons learned from the “Cash for Clunkers” program, DMME chose a two phased approach to this rebate program by implementing a reservation step in the process. A website was developed that allows rebate funds to be reserved for approved energy efficient upgrades prior to purchasing or installing the item(s). A user then must return to the website after completion of the project, in order to request the funds to be paid out.

Tools

• Visual Studio 2008 C# .Net
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Browser Security Encryption

Results

• 163 users reserved over $300,000 prior to the go-live announcement email (soft launch)
• Within the first 24 hours of announcement, over 1,300 new projects were created reserving $2.4 million
• 3,401 projects reserved $6.2 million the first week
• To date, $8.4 million has been reserved (over 71,500 projects) and 44,000 projects have been submitted to redeem $8.3 million in rebates