County Executive Daniel P. McCoy today announced a new collaborative effort between Albany County and ecoLong to help residents reduce energy waste, lower utility bills, and modernize building efficiency across the county. The Equitable Grid Interactive Homes (E-GIH) project aims to introduce intelligent building controls to reduce energy usage and to minimize electrical panel upgrades and/or home rewiring, evaluate low-cost pathways to electrification of aging or distressed buildings, and improve health and economic value for building owners/occupants. The collaboration aligns with the County Executive’s broader goals of reducing carbon emissions, modernizing aging building stock, and deploying new tools that make it easier for property owners to understand and act on their energy needs. Funding for this effort is provided in part by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

“Families are feeling the pressure of rising energy costs, and we have a responsibility to find real solutions. By teaming up with ecoLong, we’re giving residents access to cutting-edge tools that can lower bills, reduce emissions, and modernize our building stock. This is the kind of smart, collaborative work that moves our county forward,” said Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy.

The E-GIH project will include retrofitting and evaluating low-cost energy efficiency and electrification pathways within residential buildings by introducing a secure residential energy management system that controls loads within the building to reduce energy consumption and provide load flexibility. This residential energy management system will control loads within the building to reduce energy consumption and extract load flexibility. The load flexibility produced would be grid-interactive, allowing the building owner or occupant to be compensated for providing load flexibility to the grid. The data collected by the platform will help with the design of newly constructed affordable single-family fully electric and partially electric dwellings with energy-efficiency upgrades, including solar PV and energy storage systems. The long-term measurement and assessment of the performance of these units provides critically needed datasets to benchmark the performance of affordable homes across New York State. Such benchmarks are also critical for rehabilitated/retrofitted residential units for comparative analyses.

 “NYSERDA is proud to partner with Albany County to modernize and improve energy efficiency in residential buildings. This initiative will help building operators and residents throughout Albany County integrate automated controls to help manage building operating systems, reduce energy use and lower utility demand while providing indoor comfort and creating healthier living spaces," said NYSERDA President and CEO Doreen M. Harris.

As the upfront costs are the biggest barrier to the adoption of energy efficiency measures, this program will place an emphasis on disadvantaged communities through a series of top-down focus groups (community leaders, affordable housing partners, etc.) and bottom-up community meetings (public forums, community surveys, first adopters, etc.). Additionally, the Albany County Land Bank (ACLB) plans to pair the E-GIH project with existing Land Bank programs, including working directly with new homeowners completing their own rehabilitation project under our Equitable Ownership Program for first-time homebuyers or with independent development projects.