SEAI EXEED grants and the metering they need

SEAI holds back part of every EXEED stage 2 grant until the project shows its savings. The amount is the lower of €30,000 or 10% of the grant. It expires 18 months after the project completion date. You cannot verify a saving without a baseline, and the baseline must be measured before the works change the plant. So the metering decision belongs in stage 1.

EXEED (Excellence in Energy Efficient Design) is the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland's grant for non-domestic organisations: businesses, public bodies and not-for-profits. SEAI's Rapid Approval Grants pay fixed amounts for common measures such as solar PV, insulation and heat pumps. EXEED takes the projects that need a bespoke evaluation, such as a process heat pump or a new building designed to I.S. 399.

This guide is part of the buildings and process performance learning path. Figures are from SEAI's 2026 scheme guidelines, dated July 2026. SEAI revises the scheme each year, so check the current guidelines before you apply.

The two stages

Support is up to €3 million per project across both stages. A larger amount needs pre-approval from the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment. You can apply for stage 1, stage 2 or both. A stage 2 application must score at least 65 out of 100 against impact, value for money and the quality of the project team and process. The simple payback without grant must be more than 2 years.

The stage 2 rate depends on the measure. Solar PV gets up to 20%. A building retrofit with a single measure gets up to 25%, and SEAI can limit aid to 15% where no counterfactual cost is given. The heat pump rate follows the design SCOP (buildings) or COP (industry) and the supply temperature. An industrial heat pump at 90 °C to 120 °C gets up to 40% at a COP of 3.5 and up to 35% at a COP of 3. Below 90 °C, the 40% maximum needs a SCOP or COP of 4. SEAI requires the COP or SCOP to be measurable in the transfer medium, so the heat output needs its own meter.

Medium enterprises can get a further 10%, and small enterprises 20%, but only where the payback without grant is more than 10 years. SEAI expects to evaluate stage 1 within 3 weeks and stage 2 within 8 to 12 weeks. A grant request above €1 million adds about 4 weeks. Every stage 2 request of €250,000 or more gets an external technical assessment with a site inspection.

Do not start the works before the Letter of Offer. After SEAI confirms a valid application in writing, you can order equipment and pay deposits of up to 50% of its value. SEAI can refuse payment for works that started before the Letter of Offer.

EXEED projects and impactful projects

An EXEED project follows the EXEED process. That process comes from the Irish standard I.S. 399:2014, Energy efficient design management. An independent Energy Efficient Design Expert leads the studies at stage 1. The studies are the Project Execution Plan, the Energy Balance Study, the Challenge and Analyse process, the Energy Saving Register, the Energy Variables Review, the Energy Performance Deterioration Review and the Energy Measurement Plan.

The stage 2 evaluation scores three of these against the EXEED Designed standard: the Project Execution Plan, the Energy Balance Study and the Energy Saving Register. An M&V plan is optional, but SEAI scores it under the same criterion. Opportunities that did not come out of the Challenge and Analyse process are not eligible at stage 2.

After completion, the asset is certified at one of three levels: EXEED Designed, EXEED Managed or EXEED Verified.

An impactful project does not follow the EXEED process. It uses a conventional energy audit and measure selection. It gets the lower stage 1 rate of 30%, and its retention depends on an M&V report instead of certification.

Measurement and verification releases the retention

SEAI calculates the retention when it pays the grant. It uses the eligible costs actually incurred, which can be lower than the offer. An EXEED project gets the retention back by one of three paths:

1. The asset reaches EXEED Verified.
2. The asset reaches EXEED Managed.
3. The asset reaches EXEED Designed, and the project's savings count towards the target of an obligated party under the Energy Efficiency Obligation Scheme (EEOS). The obligated parties are energy suppliers with savings targets. SEAI must approve the EEOS application, and that application must include measurement and verification.

An impactful project gets the retention back when it submits an acceptable M&V report. On every path, the applicant must show the evidence within 18 months of the project completion date. After that, SEAI revokes the remaining grant.

The guidelines name IPMVP and ISO 50015 as established M&V protocols and do not require either one. IPMVP defines four options for the saving from a project. ISO 50015 sets general principles for measuring the energy performance of an organisation. For a single project, IPMVP is the usual choice. M&V work on the selected opportunities is an eligible stage 2 cost, including a Certified Measurement and Verification Professional (CMVP).

Worked example: a process heat pump

A large food plant replaces a gas boiler with a heat pump that supplies process water at 95 °C. The eligible cost, after the counterfactual, is €900,000. The design COP is 3.5.

The grant request is above €250,000, so SEAI sends an external assessor to the site. The request is below €1 million, so the evaluation takes 8 to 12 weeks.

The M&V is IPMVP Option B, because it meters all the energy of the retrofitted system. The baseline is the boiler's gas consumption against the plant's production. After the works, the plant meters the heat pump's electrical input and its heat output to the process water. The heat output divided by the electrical input gives the measured COP, which can be compared with the 3.5 that set the rate.

The timeline to claim the retention is short. Suppose the project completion date is 1 March 2027. The retention expires on 1 September 2028. A 12-month reporting period from completion ends on 1 March 2028. That leaves 6 months to write the report and get it accepted. A three-month commissioning problem that delays steady operation cuts this to 3 months. So start the reporting period at completion, not when someone first asks for the report.

Plan the metering in stage 1

The Energy Measurement Plan is one of the stage 1 studies, so its cost is eligible for up to 50%. Use it to fix the metering before the Letter of Offer.

1. Choose the M&V option first, because it decides what to meter. Option A measures the key parameter, such as a motor's power, and stipulates the others, such as its run hours. Option B measures all the energy of the retrofitted system, and suits a variable-speed drive or a heat pump. Option C uses the main meter. The DOE guide limits it to savings above about 10% to 15% of the metered consumption. Option D uses a calibrated simulation where no baseline exists. The savings measurement guide explains the options in detail.
2. Take each significant energy use in the Energy Balance Study that a measure will change. Give it a sub-meter at the M&V boundary. Reconcile the sub-meters and the estimated minor loads against the main meter for the same period. A large residual means that a load is missing from the balance.
3. Log the variables that drive each load on the same time stamps: production, outside air temperature or degree-days, flow and return temperatures, and occupancy where it applies. Use 15-minute intervals or shorter.
4. Meter the baseline for the full range of those variables. For a heating or cooling load, that is 12 months. The DOE guide asks for at least 12 months of baseline data for Option C, and prefers 24. A steady process line under Option B can need only a few weeks, if the reporting period stays in the same range. ASHRAE Guideline 14 applies a baseline model only to periods where each variable is no lower than 90% of its baseline minimum and no higher than 110% of its baseline maximum.
5. Keep the same meters in place after completion, and record every change to the plant, the product mix or the operating hours during the reporting period.

A new build has no measured baseline. The M&V compares the completed asset in operation with the baseline design used in the Energy Balance Study. The metering then belongs in the design, so that each energy use in the balance can be measured after handover.

Where measurement and verification fails

Metering for EXEED with EpiSensor

For Option A and Option B, fit ZEM electricity monitors to the circuits that the project will change. Each ZEM is calibrated with the current sensors it ships with, so Class 0.5S to IEC 62053-22 applies to the meter and its sensors together. That keeps the instrument term small in the savings uncertainty. A ZEM reports over the Zigbee mesh, so it can go in during stage 1 without a new data cable.

A ZPC pulse counter reads the pulse output of an existing gas, heat or electricity meter. In the heat pump example, one reads the boiler's gas meter for the baseline and the heat meter on the process water afterwards. TES temperature sensors log flow and return temperatures. Above 70 °C a TES probe is accurate to ±0.5 °C. On a 10 K difference between flow and return, the two probes together can be 1 K out, which is a 10% error in a calculated heat output. So take the heat output for the COP from the heat meter, and use the probes to check it and to find faults. A ZIO analogue sensor takes a 4-20 mA or 0-10 V signal from a flow or production transmitter, which gives the regression its driver variable.

A Gateway running Edge stores the readings locally, and its Data page exports the loaded chart as CSV. Each row has a millisecond Unix time stamp and a local date and time, and missing values are blank, not zero. Edge keeps 30 days of local history by default. An administrator can raise the retention with a configuration command, and the new value applies after an Edge restart. Do this before a 12-month baseline starts, because expired history cannot be recovered. Alternatively, send the data over MQTT or HTTP to a platform that keeps it for the whole baseline and reporting period.