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Rebates, credits, and the number we will not print
There is not a single dollar figure on this page, and that is the point of it. What there is instead is the sequence — because in this county the usual reason somebody misses a rebate is the order they did things in.
Three things that are true of nearly every programme.
One: the sequence matters more than the paperwork. A great many programmes require an application, an assessment, a pre-approval or a participating contractor before anything is installed. Once the old equipment is in a skip, there is no route back. This single fact accounts for most of the missed rebates we hear about.
Two: they change, and they run out. Utility and state programmes open, close, pause, change who qualifies and exhaust their funding partway through a year. A figure printed on a contractor’s website is either stale or about to be, which is why there is not one here. The only authority is the programme’s own current page and your utility.
Three: the federal credit is a tax matter. There is a federal energy-efficiency credit for certain home improvements, and it works through your tax return rather than as money off an invoice. We are not tax advisers and will not tell you what you will get. What we can do is give you the equipment details and documentation your preparer will ask for.
Pick what you are considering and your situation. Everything below is written out in full.
Most of what follows assumes the person paying for the equipment is the person living with it, and a good many programmes are written that way on purpose — owner-occupied only, or with different terms, different documentation and sometimes better incentives for rental property specifically because the split between who pays and who benefits is a known problem.
Three things worth knowing. Some programmes exclude rentals outright, so find out before you plan around one. Some have dedicated rental or multi-family tracks that are more generous than the ordinary route, particularly where the tenants are income-qualified, and those are easy to miss because they are administered separately. And the federal credit is a tax question with a different answer for a rental than for a home you live in — genuinely a question for your preparer rather than for us.
The practical advice: tell whoever you ask that it is a rental in the first sentence. It changes the answer often enough that finding out late wastes everybody’s time.
A like-for-like air conditioning replacement
Be realistic about this one. Replacing cooling with equivalent cooling is the case where incentives are thinnest, because most programmes exist to change what a building does rather than to refresh it. Efficiency thresholds tend to be high enough that ordinary replacement equipment does not reach them.
That does not mean nothing applies. Higher-efficiency equipment sometimes qualifies for a utility rebate, and the federal credit has efficiency criteria that some central air conditioning meets. Both are worth checking; neither is worth choosing equipment around on its own.
Which is the real advice here. Do not buy a more expensive machine to chase an incentive that is smaller than the difference. That arithmetic is easy to do and is regularly done backwards by people who are being helped enthusiastically.
If you are replacing anyway, the question worth more than any rebate on this list is what happens to your ductwork, because that is where the performance of the system you are buying will actually be decided.
A heat pump replacing gas heat
This is the case programmes are built around, and it is where the money is. It is also the case with the most conditions attached, so it is the one where doing things in the wrong order costs the most.
Expect some combination of: an application before the work, a contractor who is enrolled in the programme, a specified equipment list, minimum efficiency criteria, and documentation of what was removed as well as what was installed. Any one of those, missed, can end it. We will tell you which apply to your job before you commit to anything, and we will tell you plainly if we are not enrolled in the programme that suits you best — because that is a real possibility and you should hear it from us rather than find out afterwards.
The other half of this is engineering rather than money. A heat pump replacing a furnace changes the electrical load, sometimes the panel, and often what the ductwork has to do, because a heat pump moves more air for the same effect. Those costs are real and they belong on the quote next to the incentive, not after it.
A heat pump water heater as well
Worth raising because the incentives here are often better than people expect, and because doing it at the same time as a heating change can simplify both the electrical work and the applications.
Two practical things, and they are physical rather than financial. A heat pump water heater needs space and air — it takes heat out of the air around it, so a sealed closet is a problem and a garage is usually ideal. And it needs a condensate route, which the tank it replaces did not.
It is also worth saying that water heating is frequently not our trade. Some contractors do both and some do not. If we are not the right people for that half of the job we will say so and you can put the two together yourself — but knowing that both are on the table at the same moment is usually worth something on the electrical side alone.
Duct sealing, replacement or insulation
The quietly sensible one, and the one people forget to ask about because it is not a machine.
In a house with attic ducts, duct work is frequently the improvement with the largest real effect per pound spent, and it is also measurable — a leakage test before and after gives you a number, which almost nothing else in this trade does. Where incentives exist for it they usually want that measurement, which is convenient, because you should be getting it anyway.
Two notes. Duct work is permitted work in its own right and verification applies to it. And it pairs well with equipment replacement, both for the incentive and because new equipment on old leaky duct is the commonest way to spend a lot of money and be disappointed.
Going all-electric over a few years
If this is the plan, the most valuable thing you can do costs nothing: get the electrical capacity assessed once, at the start.
The failure mode for staged electrification is not the equipment, it is the panel. People replace the heating, then the water heater, then add a car charger, and discover at step three that the panel needed upgrading at step one — at which point the trenching and the utility coordination land on a job that was supposed to be small. Knowing the capacity at the beginning changes the order you do things in, and sometimes it changes the equipment.
On the money: staging is usually good for incentives rather than bad, because programmes come and go and a plan spread over years catches more of them than a single weekend does. But it means keeping records. Keep every invoice, every model and serial number, every certificate and every application. Nobody enjoys this and everybody who has claimed for staged work wishes they had done it.
And plan around your own life rather than around a programme. A programme that closes is annoying; a system replaced two years early because a deadline was looming is expensive.
You own it and live in it
The straightforward case, and the one almost every programme is written for. What matters is having the documents when they are asked for.
Keep: the contract, the invoice, the model and serial numbers of what went in, the permit, and any compliance or verification certificates. Programmes ask for different subsets of that and they ask afterwards, when the installer has moved on to other jobs. It is a folder, and it takes ten minutes.
The other thing that catches people out is the account name. Rebates are usually tied to the utility account for the address, and if the account is in one spouse’s name and the application is in the other’s, that is a fixable problem which is much easier to fix before submission.
You own it and rent it out
See the note above, which is the substance of it. Beyond eligibility, two practical points.
Access. Programmes that require an assessment before the work, or verification after it, mean somebody coming into the property at a scheduled time. That is straightforward when you plan for it and awkward when you have not told the tenant.
The utility account. If it is in the tenant’s name, some programmes need their cooperation and occasionally their signature. It is worth finding out which before you present anybody with a form.
A condo, or a property with an HOA
Two separate approvals, and they are not related to each other. The rebate programme has its rules; the association has its own, and neither cares about the other.
The association questions are usually physical: where the outdoor unit may go, what it may look like, how loud it may be, whether anything may be fixed to a common wall or penetrate a common roof, and which hours work may happen in. Those can genuinely rule out a piece of equipment, and finding that out after an application has been approved is a miserable sequence.
So get the association’s answer in writing first, then apply. We will give you the physical details they will ask for — dimensions, placement, clearances and the manufacturer’s published sound rating — and we will put them on paper because a committee cannot act on a conversation.
If income-qualified programmes may apply
Then start there, before anything else, because these are the programmes that can change the answer completely rather than by a bit.
They are administered separately from the ordinary rebates, often by different organisations, and they frequently work by managing the whole job rather than by reimbursing you afterwards. That means the sequence is even more important: applying after the work is done is usually not possible at all.
Two things we will not do. We will not guess whether you qualify — the criteria are specific, they change, and getting a hopeful answer from a contractor is worse than getting a real one from the programme. And we will not use it as a lever to sell you something in the meantime.
What we will do is tell you honestly if we think it is worth the phone call before you spend money, including when that means your job pauses for a few weeks.
The one thing to do next
Ask whether the efficiency step actually pays for itself, separately from the rebate. If the answer is no, the rebate is not a reason. Then spend the attention on the ductwork instead.
The one thing to do next
Ask, before you sign anything: which programme, what has to happen before the work starts, and are you enrolled in it? Those three answers decide whether the incentive exists for you. And get the panel assessed at the same visit.
The one thing to do next
Look at where it would physically go before you look at the money. Space, air around it and a condensate route. If the only location is a sealed closet, the incentive is irrelevant.
The one thing to do next
Get a duct leakage test with a number attached, before and after. It is what the programmes want, it is what tells you whether the work was worth doing, and it is the only HVAC improvement you can actually prove.
The one thing to do next
Have the electrical capacity assessed once, now, before step one. It costs little, it changes the order of everything after it, and it is the thing that turns a staged plan into an expensive surprise when it is skipped.
What this page refuses to do
No figures. Not one amount, not one percentage, not one deadline. Programmes change and run out, and a number here would be wrong for somebody reading it next month.
No promises about your tax return. We are heating and cooling contractors. The federal credit is a tax matter and your preparer is the person for it.
No naming of which programme is open today, for the same reason as the figures. What we will do is tell you what applies to your job when we quote it, in writing, and tell you if the programme that suits you best is one we are not enrolled in.
And no rebate-led equipment. If an incentive is pushing you towards a machine that is wrong for the building, the incentive is the smaller number. We would rather lose that sale than install it.
Before anything is ordered
Book the visit while the decision is still open. We measure the ductwork, look at the panel, and tell you what applies to your job in writing — including when the honest answer is that nothing does.