California's $8,000 heat pump rebate is reserved. LADWP still pays.

Search for a California heat pump rebate and the state’s own page comes back first, which is the correct result and the wrong place to stop. The rebate on it has been unavailable to new single-family applicants since winter, and that is true in every part of the state.

Which is the point people get wrong in both directions. The state’s closure is not something your utility can undo, and it is not something your utility caused. But once you accept that the state route is shut, the only remaining question is whether there is a fourth pot of money sitting behind your meter, and the answer to that one does depend on who owns the meter. For most of California there is nothing there. For customers of a publicly owned utility there can be several thousand dollars, and the state’s page does not mention it.

Six pages were read for this article, all on the verification date at the top.

The layers, and which of them is paying

Five of those six rows are shut, dead or not yet started for a single-family household. The sixth is the one nobody links to.

The state page’s own answer to “what is open now”

The California Energy Commission’s status notice is unambiguous. As of February 24, 2026, it says, HEEHRA rebates for single-family home retrofits are fully reserved statewide, all reservation requests that have not been approved have been put on a waitlist in case budget becomes available again, and no new income verification requests are being accepted.

Further down the same page, under a question asking which Inflation Reduction Act-funded HEEHRA rebates are open now, the answer describes the $8,000 single-family rebate for a heat pump HVAC system and tells the reader that to begin their application and take the first step of verifying their income, they should go to the program administrator’s landing page.

That answer is not careless. It goes on to say that the program continues to process and finalise applications for completed projects with approved reservations, that funds are limited, that the reader should check the administrator’s budget report for their area, and that Phase II availability will be announced later. What it never says, anywhere in the answer, is the one thing the banner at the top of the page says: that the income verification step it is sending the reader to is closed. A reader who lands on the question rather than the banner, which is what a search result does to you, is told to start a step that is not being accepted, and is warned only that money is tight.

The multifamily half is genuinely different and the page is consistent about it. Multifamily properties may qualify for up to $14,000 per unit and the page states that HEEHRA rebates are still available statewide for multifamily homes. The program administrator’s page agrees, in a notice dated April 11, 2025 saying multifamily pre-applications are being processed and funding remains available in all regions. That is the oldest notice in this article and nothing more recent on either page revises it.

The ratepayer program shut earlier, and its own list disagrees with itself

TECH Clean California administers HEEHRA Phase I for the state, and it also runs a separate pot of its own. Its footer describes that second program as funded by California ratepayers and taxpayers, administered by Energy Solutions under a contract with Southern California Edison on behalf of various California utilities, under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission. That is not the same money as the federal award, and the page keeps notices about both in one list.

Read the first and sixth rows together. Single-family heat pump HVAC incentives are recorded as fully reserved statewide on January 17, 2025, and then recorded as fully reserved again on November 14, 2025, after a notice on November 12, 2025 saying they were nearly reserved. Nothing between those two entries says the measure reopened. Either it did and the page never announced it, or one notice supersedes the other and the page never says which. The list also notes that service area-specific single-family heat pump water heater incentives were fully reserved in parts of the state as early as 2024, which is well before the date the same list gives for the statewide closure.

That page is still the most honest one in this article, because it carries the federal closures as well as its own. The Energy Commission’s page carries the federal closure and says nothing about the ratepayer program having gone first, and the Energy Commission’s page is the one a reader is most likely to land on.

The federal money is not exhausted in the sense of being spent. The Energy Commission states that California received a total award of $590 million, and that $290 million of it was for HEEHRA. Inside that $290 million sits Phase II, worth $152 million in rebates, which the page says is not yet available. Its own timeline adds the condition that matters: the $290 million award can only be used for Phase I, and the Commission will need to obtain federal approval on a revised application before it can spend the Phase II money. Waiting for Phase II is waiting for a decision that has not been made, not for a date that has been set.

The separate $291 million HOMES award is split between an equitable building decarbonisation direct install program and a pay for performance program, at $130.3 million and $90.8 million. Those two figures do not add up to the award they are said to divide, and the page does not explain the gap. It also says plainly that HOMES rebates are not yet available, while stating elsewhere that direct install retrofits were to begin in summer 2025.

What is actually open runs through a municipal utility

LADWP’s Consumer Rebate Program lists up to $2,500 per unit for an ENERGY STAR qualified heat pump water heater and up to $2,500 per ton for a heat pump HVAC system, noting that heat pump rebates increased for equipment purchased and installed on or after November 1, 2025. It also lists $2 per square foot for ENERGY STAR qualified windows and $200 for a whole house fan.

SMUD lists up to $4,000 for a heat pump water heater meeting a NEEA Tier III or IV specification, up to $3,000 for a qualifying heat pump HVAC system installed by a contractor in its own network, $750 for replacing a gas cooktop or range with induction, and $100 for replacing an electric one.

Neither utility applies an income test to those amounts on the pages read here, which is the opposite of how the federal rebate works. Neither utility is named anywhere on the Energy Commission’s page either, so a reader who starts at the state and stops there never learns the money exists.

Two warnings before anyone treats those numbers as a quote.

The two headline figures are not in the same units, and neither is a flat amount

LADWP pays by the ton of capacity. SMUD’s page gives a single figure for a qualifying system. A three-ton job and a two-ton job are the same rebate at SMUD and are not at LADWP, so the two cannot be set beside each other and compared, and nothing below does.

LADWP’s own rate tables also split its headline in half by equipment type. A central ducted, split or packaged heat pump tops out at $1,250 per ton at the highest efficiency row listed, starting at $1,000. Only the ductless mini-split and multi-split table reaches $2,500 per ton, and that table starts at $1,500. A household replacing a ducted gas furnace and air conditioner is reading a headline figure from the table that does not cover it.

The water heater rate works on a rule most readers will not expect. The columns of LADWP’s qualification table are headed with the capacity and efficiency of the pre-existing gas water heater, not of the new one. What decides the payment is the tank being removed. Reaching $2,500 requires the largest of those bands. The entry rate is $1,500, and on the page as written the measure appears to be built around replacing a gas unit, which would leave a household with an electric resistance tank outside it.

LADWP says its own money is not guaranteed

At the foot of the same page, under the related programs, LADWP states that program funding is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis, and that rebates are not guaranteed. That is the same class of warning the state publishes, and on this site it is the sentence that matters most, because first-come first-served is how every closure above happened. It is also how Colorado’s single-family rebate ended, and Colorado at least publishes a dashboard that now reads $0 in both of its regions, which is a thing no page in this article does.

LADWP’s page adds two amounts a new project cannot collect

Under the heat pump HVAC rebate, LADWP tells homeowners two things they can put on top of its own money. It says they may also receive up to $2,000 in federal tax credit. It then names the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s GO ZERO program and advertises a rebate of up to $3,000 for a qualified heat pump.

GO ZERO’s own page is blunt. The program is paused, no new applications will be accepted during this time, and applications submitted before the pause are under review for rebate payment. The page points to a staff update given to the district’s Stationary Source Committee on May 15, 2026.

The federal credit is 25C, and the Energy Commission’s page states that it is only available for heat pumps placed into service by December 31, 2025, which is the same termination covered here when the credits ended.

The interesting part is that the Energy Commission does not stop there. In the same paragraph, immediately after the expiry sentence, it tells readers that the credit could provide additional financial benefits to homeowners and that they should see the IRS announcement and contact a tax professional. So the state page is not simply the correct one against LADWP’s wrong one. It says the credit ended and then recommends it, in consecutive sentences, and LADWP’s page carries only the second half of that message with a dollar figure attached.

A Los Angeles homeowner reading LADWP’s rebate page is therefore shown three numbers, can collect one, and can find the state’s own page apparently backing up one of the other two.

PG&E’s residential rebate hub has no heat pump on it

PG&E’s rebates and incentives page lists a $300 rebate for a portable backup power system, up to $4,000 on a pre-owned electric vehicle, up to $5,000 towards home EV charging equipment for income-eligible households, instant coupons through Golden State Rebates, clean energy incentives for renewable installation, and a set of business programs. There is no heat pump route among them.

PG&E customers are inside the territory the statewide programs cover, and both of those are reserved. Whether PG&E funds a heat pump route of its own is not something this page settles: its navigation carries a building electrification section that was not opened for this article, and the hub links onward to pages that were not opened either. Treat the paragraph above as a description of that one hub rather than of everything PG&E funds.

What to do with this

1. Find out whether your electricity comes from a publicly owned utility or an investor-owned one before you read any rebate page. It will not change your standing with the state, which is the same everywhere. It decides whether there is a separate utility program behind it.
2. If you are on LADWP or SMUD, read the utility’s page as the live one and the state’s as background. Check the tier tables rather than the headline, and at LADWP check what you are removing, not only what you are installing.
3. Treat the federal credit line on LADWP’s page as out of date rather than as an offer. The Energy Commission’s page states the credit was only available for heat pumps placed in service by December 31, 2025. What that means for a particular return is a question for a tax professional, and both of those pages say so too.
4. If you are in the South Coast air district, do not count GO ZERO either. Its own page says it is paused.
5. If you own or manage a multifamily property, the federal route is the one still open, at a larger per-unit figure than either utility program, and it is open regardless of which utility serves the building.
6. If you are a single-family household anywhere in California, the federal waitlist is the only federal route and no date has been published for it. The Energy Commission says Phase II availability will be announced later, and that spending it needs federal approval first.

California’s split between a federally funded appliance rebate and a whole-home program is the same split described in general terms here, with HEEHRA standing in for HEAR and HOMES sitting undelivered behind it. Where each state stands as it gets checked is recorded on Is it open in my state?.

If a contractor quoted you a federal tax credit on a 2026 heat pump, or you were told GO ZERO money was still available, or you reached the top LADWP rate on a tank the table would not seem to cover, write in. A correction is the most useful thing this site can receive.

What is not confirmed here

• Which utilities the TECH ratepayer program actually served. Its footer says it runs on behalf of various California utilities under the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the investor-owned ones. Whether LADWP or SMUD customers were ever inside it is not stated on any page read here, and no claim is made above about them losing that route.
• Whether the HEEHRA waitlist has moved. The page says unapproved requests were put on a waitlist in case budget becomes available again. It gives no queue length, no order and no date.
• Whether LADWP’s water heater rebate requires a gas unit. The qualification table’s columns name a pre-existing gas water heater and the technical requirements list a capacity and efficiency for it. The page does not state the restriction as an eligibility rule in prose, so it is reported above as what the table is built on rather than as a confirmed exclusion.
• Whether SMUD’s amounts are still funded. SMUD’s rebate page carries no dated status notice and no funding disclaimer of the kind LADWP and the state both publish. That is an absence on the page read here, not evidence the money is secure, and SMUD may publish status elsewhere.
• Whether other publicly owned utilities are open. Two were read. California has many more and nothing here is a statement about any of them.
• The other investor-owned utilities. Southern California Edison’s residential rebate page could not be read: it answers with a bot challenge rather than a page. San Diego Gas and Electric and SoCalGas were not attempted.
• Everything PG&E funds. One hub page was read and its onward links were not opened, including the building electrification section.
• Whether the January 2025 and November 2025 notices on the same measure can be reconciled. The administrator’s page carries both and explains neither. No attempt was made to resolve it by contacting the program.
• Why the HOMES split does not add to the HOMES award. Both figures and the award are printed on the Energy Commission’s page. Nothing on it accounts for the difference, and no other document was read.
• Whether LADWP has since corrected its stacking advice. The federal credit line and the GO ZERO line were both on the page on the verification date at the top. A page can be edited without any date on it changing.
• Whether CA-TREC grants exist yet. The page says grants are not yet available in one section and records approval of grant recipients in July 2026 in its timeline. Contractor training is not a household rebate, so this was noted rather than chased.