Contractor Participation

Calling all local contractors! Do you:

Deliver residential and/or commercial energy efficiency upgrades in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and/or Ventura Counties?
Provide any of the following: heat pumps (HVAC or water heater), HVAC tune-up or replacement, windows, insulation, duct work, refrigeration, lighting, or other energy saving services?
Provide services to help homes and businesses decarbonize and save money?
Want to access incentive dollars and expand your customer base?

If your answers are yes to the questions above, complete the interest form to connect about participating in 3C-REN’s Single Family and/or Commercial incentive programs! 

The 3C-REN programs offer contractors flexibility by paying incentives for actual metered kWh and therm savings. Rather than having a restrictive list of measures and incentives, the program pays you to meet your customers’ energy savings or electrification needs. Large bonus incentives are available for projects in underserved communities, at small to medium businesses, and for electrification projects throughout the tri-county region.

We use Recurve’s Flexmarket platform to measure energy savings. Enrolled contractors can submit a project on their organization’s portal.

Get Started!
Complete our interest form to get in touch with 3C-REN.

Company(Required)

Name(Required)

First Last

Email(Required)

Phone(Required)

Which program(s) are you interested in?(Required)

Services Provided:

Counties Served:(Required)

San Luis Obispo County

Santa Barbara County

Ventura County

Counties beyond the Tri-Counties

Select all that apply.

CAPTCHA

ELIGIBILITY
Learn more about site and project eligibility.

Site Eligibility

To earn incentives for electric savings, residents must receive electric service from either:

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)

Southern California Edison (SCE)

To earn incentives for gas savings, residents must receive gas service from either:

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)

SoCalGas (SCG)

Project Eligibility

The most common residential projects we see are HVAC, heat pump water heater (HPWH), insulation, and pool pumps. For commercial projects we most often see HPWH, refrigeration, and lighting. But you are not limited; almost any measure that saves electricity or gas, or electrifies (switches gas to electricity) can qualify.

Eligible projects must support electrification. This includes replacing existing natural gas equipment with electric equipment. Installing new natural gas equipment is not eligible for incentives.

Projects cannot be enrolled in another ratepayer-funded energy efficiency program, including Market Access Programs and other FLEXmarkets.

For more information about eligibility, including how to meet Hard-To-Reach eligibility, please refer to the applicable program manual.

INCENTIVES
Learn more about incentive requirements, higher incentives for equity target customers, and stacking incentives.

Incentives through the program are broken into two parts.

An upfront incentive payment, which is 50% of the total incentive for residential and 20% of the incentive for commercial.
A performance-based incentive that is based on actual measured energy savings for 12 months post-installation, paid quarterly based on performance, with the potential to earn the remaining 50% of the total incentive.

All incentives are paid directly to contractors. The residential single family home program has a passthrough requirement where 100% of the upfront payment must go to the customer as a discount on their invoice. The commercial program does not have a passthrough requirement however, it is encouraged for contractors to apply a discount on a customers invoice.

For more details pertaining to upfront incentive or the performance-based incentive, please refer to the applicable program manual located in the “Learn More” section below.

Equity Target Customers

You could be eligible for a bigger incentive if your project is for an Equity Target Customer. To learn more about Equity Target Customers, please refer to the applicable program manual.

Incentive multipliers vary per program:

Residential Single Family Home Program (non-electrification):

2.0X gas savings
2.0X electric savings

Residential Single Family Home Program (electrification):

2.0X gas savings
2.0X electric savings

Commercial Program:

1.5X gas savings
1.5X electric savings

Stacking Incentives

Layering multiple incentive programs can result in significant cost savings for your projects.

For residential projects, 3C-REN incentives can stack with other available programs. Available programs and funding often change so please refer to these documents for the latest information:

Single Family Residential Incentives, as of May 2026

Energy Incentive Amounts, as of April 2026

3C-REN is not currently aware of other programs that are eligible to stack for commercial projects but will update this information if new programs come online.

Visit the Switch Is On for a variety of local, state, and federal incentives, rebates, and credits. Or contact 3C-REN’s concierge to learn how the various programs can work together.

Important: 3C-REN’s Program is a CPUC-sanctioned, rate-payer-funded energy efficiency program; therefore, participants are not eligible for incentives through another such program for the next 12 months. Interested participants who were enrolled in another rate-payer-funded energy efficiency program in the previous 12 months are also not eligible for incentives through the 3C-REN Program.

Budget
Check out the remaining incentive budgets for the residential and commercial programs per county and funding bucket.

3C-REN incentives are typically reset at the beginning of the calendar year and are reserved booked and distributed until they are exhausted. Incentives remaining for this year are:

*Note: Incentive budget reservation amounts include projects that are pre-approved, but not yet in performance tracking.

Steps to participate
What to expect when you become an enrolled aggregator/contractor.

3C-REN has intro meeting with the aggregator/contractor to talk about services offered and confirm program compatibility.
Aggregator/contractor signs the Flexibility Purchase Agreement and Terms and Conditions with Recurve, program implementor for 3C-REN.
Recurve creates an "organization" for the contractor's company and assigns an "admin", someone who will be submitting projects and onboards the aggregator/contractor with a demo of the FLEXmarket portal.
The aggregator/contractor "admin" creates their login to their organization.
The aggregator/contractor starts submitting projects!
Program staff will contact the aggregator/contractor to confirm the mailing address for the first incentive payment, which will be issued by physical check. After receiving the initial payment, the aggregator/contractor may enroll in ACH/direct deposit through CorPay for future incentive payments.