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Specimen document

This is the actual document every organization receives — populated for a fictional congregation so you can judge the format before sending us anything.

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Payback Plan

Specimen

Prepared for

St. Elmo’s-on-Hudson

A mid-size congregation, Hudson Valley, New York

The cost of leaving it alone

$2,140/yr

That is what this building currently spends on energy it does not need — found in your own bills, not a national average — and it repeats every year until someone does the boring work below.

On an annual energy spend of $13,800, that is 15.5% — inside the 10–20% band typical of buildings that have never had a systematic pass.

Prepared by

Lightkeeper — the treasurer’s energy staffer

July 2026 · specimen edition

Written to be read aloud at a board meeting. Every number’s origin is stated where it appears.

Recommendations, not engineering; estimates, not guarantees. Your bill data is stored privately, used only for this plan, and deleted after 12 months or on request.

Specimen · 1 of 6

Section one

Your baseline — what the building actually uses

Electric

$8,900

41,700 kWh over the last 12 months

Heating (gas)

$4,900

2,700 therms over the last 12 months

Total

$13,800

exact, from your bills

The year, month by month

The shape is the story: winter gas heating dominates (December through March is 49% of the year’s spend), with a smaller summer bump from cooling the sanctuary for services. That is why three of the five actions in this plan attack heating.

Compared with similar buildings: on energy per square foot, this building runs roughly a sixth above the national median for worship facilities of its vintage — not scandalous, but real money. The gap is operational (schedules, sealing, controls), not structural, which is good news: operational waste is the cheap kind to fix.

How to read every number in this plan

  • $13,800 — plain mono figures are exact, taken from your own bills.
  • Program facts — rebate amounts and eligibility, verified against the program page on the date of writing, link included.
  • ≈ figures with an italic assumption line — estimates, each traceable to the stated source. Never blended with the other two.

Recommendations, not engineering; estimates, not guarantees. Your bill data is stored privately, used only for this plan, and deleted after 12 months or on request.

Specimen · 2 of 6

Section two

Rate-plan check — are you billed correctly?

Electric: you’re on the wrong rate — legally, provably, fixably.

The building is billed on Central Hudson’s small-commercial service class. New York Public Service Law §76 entitles religious bodies to residential-rate service on application — a right, not a discount program. Re-priced on the residential tariff, your last twelve months would have cost about $480 less.

The fix is one form to the utility. We prepare it; a trustee signs it; it applies to every bill afterward. This is ranked action #2 overleaf.

Two things we checked that are already right.

Your electricity supply is the utility’s default supply — you have notbeen signed into a third-party ESCO contract, which is where congregations most often quietly overpay. And your gas service class matches your usage pattern. No action needed on either; we’ll re-check both at the annual review.

Why we tell you what’s already fine: a plan that only ever finds problems is a sales document. This one is an audit of the facts, and the facts include the things nobody needs to fix.

Recommendations, not engineering; estimates, not guarantees. Your bill data is stored privately, used only for this plan, and deleted after 12 months or on request.

Specimen · 3 of 6

Section three

The top five actions, ranked by payback

Together: $2,140/yr in recurring savings for about $750 of one-time cost — most of it volunteer work, two items entirely free.

01Match thermostat schedules to actual occupancy

≈ $640/yr

The sanctuary and parish hall are heated as if occupied daily; the calendar says ~14 hours a week. Two programmable thermostats, set-back 10°F outside scheduled use.

upfront $250 · payback 5 months · Volunteer (we supply the model list and the rebate form)

Assumption: DOE: roughly 1% of heating cost saved per °F of setback held 8 hours; applied to the gas-dominated share of the bill.

02Reclassify to the residential rate for religious bodiesFree

≈ $480/yr

New York Public Service Law §76 entitles houses of worship to residential-rate electric service on application. You are billed on the small-commercial tariff today. One form fixes it, permanently.

upfront $0 · payback Immediate · Lightkeeper drafts the application; a trustee signs

Assumption: Computed from your last twelve months of usage re-priced on the residential tariff — a rate-book fact, not an estimate.

03Book the utility’s free energy survey — and its free LEDsFree

≈ $370/yr

Central Hudson’s no-cost commercial assessment includes direct-install measures: LEDs in the highest-use fixtures, typically installed the same visit. It has never been booked for this building.

upfront $0 · payback Immediate · Lightkeeper books it; you host the two-hour visit

Assumption: Direct-install savings estimated from the utility’s own program fact sheet for buildings of this size.

04Weatherstrip the two main entries; insulate the attic hatch

≈ $310/yr

Both entry doors show daylight at the sill; the sanctuary attic hatch is uninsulated. An afternoon of work with about $350 in materials.

upfront $350 · payback 14 months · Volunteer or handyman

Assumption: ENERGY STAR attributes 5–10% of heating loss to air leakage; we used the low end, applied to your gas spend.

05Office & kitchen plug-load cleanup

≈ $340/yr

Smart power strips for the office, consolidate two half-empty refrigerators into one, and lower the water heater from 140°F to 120°F.

upfront $150 · payback 5 months · Volunteer, one afternoon

Assumption: ENERGY STAR appliance and standby-load figures; refrigerator estimate assumes one unit is pre-2010.

And nine smaller items, for the record

  • — Community-solar subscription (≈ $340/yr off the supply charge — no roof work; waitlist-dependent)
  • — Renegotiate the boiler service contract at renewal (quotes vary ± $200/yr)
  • — Insulate the exposed heating pipes in the boiler room
  • — Exterior and holiday lighting to LED on timers
  • — Occupancy sensors in restrooms and storage rooms
  • — Office equipment on schedules (copier sleep, after-hours shutdown)
  • — Storm-window film on the drafty office wing for winter
  • — Ceiling-fan destratification in the high sanctuary during heating season
  • — Annual boiler tune-up moved to early fall (efficiency measured, not assumed)

Worth doing opportunistically; none changes the headline math.

Recommendations, not engineering; estimates, not guarantees. Your bill data is stored privately, used only for this plan, and deleted after 12 months or on request.

Specimen · 4 of 6

Section four

Programs you already qualify for

This is found money — programs your bills already pay for through surcharges, going unclaimed. For each: what it gives, whether you qualify, and who does the paperwork.

Central Hudson free commercial energy assessment

A no-cost professional walk-through survey, plus direct-install measures (LEDs, smart strips) at no charge during the visit.

Eligibility: Any non-residential Central Hudson account — you qualify today.

cenhud.com → business energy programs

Who does what: Lightkeeper books the visit and attends by phone; you unlock the boiler room.

NYS Clean Heat — heat-pump rebates

Up to $12,000 toward cold-climate heat pumps for a building this size, paid through participating installers. Your boiler is 24 years old; the moment it needs replacing is the moment this money matters.

Eligibility: Utility customers replacing fossil-fuel heating; rebate flows through the installer’s paperwork.

nyserda.ny.gov → NYS Clean Heat

Who does what: Lightkeeper collects two participating-installer quotes and checks the math; the vestry chooses and signs.

NYSERDA FlexTech shared-cost study

NYSERDA pays half the cost of an engineering study if the board pursues the boiler-to-heat-pump conversion seriously.

Eligibility: Commercial and institutional buildings, houses of worship included.

nyserda.ny.gov → FlexTech

Who does what: Lightkeeper prepares the application; you approve the scope.

NY-Sun community solar

A subscription (no panels, no roof work) that discounts the supply portion of the electric bill — about 10%, ≈ $340/yr at your usage.

Eligibility: Any Central Hudson account; subject to local project availability.

nyserda.ny.gov → NY-Sun community solar

Who does what: Lightkeeper vets the subscription contract for exit terms before anyone signs.

New York Interfaith Power & Light

Congregation-specific guidance, occasional bulk-purchase discounts, and peer congregations who have done this before.

Eligibility: Houses of worship of any tradition.

We’ll introduce you directly.

Who does what: Lightkeeper makes the introduction; whether to join is yours.

Program facts verified against each program’s page on the date of writing. In a real plan, each carries the direct application link; rebate amounts change, so we re-verify before anything is signed.

Recommendations, not engineering; estimates, not guarantees. Your bill data is stored privately, used only for this plan, and deleted after 12 months or on request.

Specimen · 5 of 6

Section five

The stewardship line

Take the five actions and the building burns about 470 fewer therms and 4,100 fewer kWh each year — roughly 3 metric tons of CO₂e avoided annually, the work of about fifty urban trees each growing for ten years. For a congregation, that is care of creation with a receipt attached; the savings stay in the mission besides.

Assumption: EPA eGRID emission factors for upstate New York electricity and EPA equivalencies for natural gas and tree sequestration; state-average rates are used only in this paragraph, as a proxy, never for the dollar figures.

Section six

Next steps — who does what, by when

  1. 01

    Lightkeeperdrafts the §76 rate application and books the free Central Hudson survey — by Aug 1.

  2. 02

    St. Elmo’s-on-Hudson has a trustee sign the application and hosts the survey visit — by Aug 22.

  3. 03

    Together: thermostat install on a volunteer weekend (we supply the shortlist and the rebate form), then a fifteen-minute check-in call — Sep 15— to chase whatever the utility hasn’t done yet.

Scope of this document

This plan is recommendations, not engineering; estimates, not guarantees. Every savings estimate states its assumption where it appears; every program fact was verified on the date of writing. Lightkeeper takes no commission from any vendor, installer, or program listed — no recommendation in this document makes us money. Your bill data is yours: stored privately, used only to produce this plan, never shared or sold, deleted after 12 months or on request.

Recommendations, not engineering; estimates, not guarantees. Your bill data is stored privately, used only for this plan, and deleted after 12 months or on request.

Specimen · 6 of 6

This is the whole deliverable — no portal, no dashboard, no upsell.

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