Licensing

The Home Energy Saver (HES) Multifamily APIs are available for licensing.

Technology Transfer at LBNL

Berkeley Lab licenses software and technologies to industry in order to move Lab inventions to the marketplace and benefit the public. Berkeley Lab seeks licensees that can marshal the requisite financial, R & D, manufacturing, marketing, and managerial capabilities and commitment to successfully commercialize Berkeley Lab innovations. 

Our goals are to:

• Promote the use of Berkeley Lab technology to benefit society through licensing Lab inventions to companies capable of successfully commercializing them;
  
• Support the research mission of the Lab through generating licensing income that supports future Lab research and by identifying industry partners to sponsor Lab research;
  
• Earn a fair return and recognition for the Lab and inventors; and
  
• Contribute to regional and national economic development.

Given license fees that are a tiny fraction of the millions of dollars we have invested in developing these web services, third-party software developers can avoid similar expenditures and get tremendous leverage by re-purposing the tools we have developed. 
Separate licenses are required for Single Family and Home Energy Scoring Tool APIs. 

Licensing On-boarding Process 

1. Sign Up. This creates an account to which your key(s) will be attached once your license is executed, and ensures that you receive notices about the project.
   
2. Review the sample code and other documentation on this site, and ensure that your technical team is capable of working with the APIs. 
   
3. Review and execute a 120-day Evaluation License agreement or a Full License agreement. 
   
4. Return the signed agreement to our Innovation and Partnerships Office at apilicensing@lbl.gov with a copy to our technical team at hes_api_license@lists.lbl.gov. 
   
5. Once the license is executed, we will provide a unique API key enabling the licensee to fully utilize the APIs. 
   

We are pleased to report that for at least the initial one-year license period, we will absorb all the costs of hosting, referred to in the new licenses as Usage Fees (the previous plan was to pass that on to you). For reference, our current usage costs are approximately $0.01 per API call.

Requests for additional information can be directed to hesapi@lbl.gov