The income limit for home energy rebates depends on your state

If you have read that your household can get up to $14,000 back on a heat pump, you have read something that is true in a way that is almost useless. The number is real. Whether you can have any of it depends on which state you live in, what your county’s median income is, and whether the specific appliance you want has been switched on yet where you are. None of those three things is decided in Washington. What Washington did decide is now over: every federal tax credit a homeowner could use for energy work has ended, which is why an application to a state program is the only route left.

Here is what the source pages actually say.

Two programs, and only one of them is income-restricted

The Energy Department describes a single Home Energy Rebates Program containing two separate rebates.

The first is HOMES, the Home Owner Managing Energy Savings rebate. The department’s page describes it as covering “eligible whole-home energy upgrade projects for households at all income levels”, with savings of up to $8,000 “based on modeled energy savings levels with a minimum savings of 20%”. You are paid for how much energy the upgrade is modeled to save, and the door is open regardless of what you earn.

The second is the one everybody writes about, and it works nothing like that. It pays fixed amounts for specific equipment, it is delivered at the point of sale, and it is restricted by income.

That difference is the single most useful thing to know before you start reading, and it is the thing most guides blur, because they present both programs as one pot of money with one set of rules.

The name problem is not cosmetic

On the Energy Department’s Home Energy Rebates Program page, the second program is the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate, abbreviated HEEHR. New Mexico calls it Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates, abbreviated HEAR. New Hampshire calls it HEAR as well. Same money, different acronym depending on whose page you landed on. Other federal pages may use HEAR too; what matters is that the department’s main page for this program does not.

This matters more than a naming quibble should, because the two names sort the internet into two halves. Search HEEHR and you get federal explainers. Search HEAR and you get state program pages. The federal half tells you the amounts. The state half tells you the rules that actually decide whether you qualify. Very few readers see both, and the amounts are the half that travels.

The income limit is a state decision

This is where guides written from the federal page go wrong.

New Mexico’s program page states the eligibility test plainly: “You need to earn less than 80% of your county’s Area Median Income (AMI) or participate in specific state or federal benefit programs.” That is the line. Above it, the page offers nothing.

New Hampshire’s page describes a different structure entirely. “Rebates are only available to households who earn up to 150% of the area median income.” Below 80%, households “are eligible for rebates that are up to 100% of the project cost”. Between 80% and 150%, “the maximum rebate amount is 50% of the project costs”.

So a household earning above 80% but below 150% of area median income is outside the program as New Mexico describes it, and inside it in New Hampshire at half the cost of the work. The federal page carries a footnote pointing the same way without setting the number: “Grantees may increase rebates for households with income less than 80% of the area median.” Grantees are the states. The department set a ceiling and left the shape underneath it to them.

If you take one thing from this page: look up your own state’s income rule before you look up any dollar amount. The dollar amounts are broadly consistent and the eligibility rules are not, which is the opposite of what the coverage implies.

What the fixed amounts are, where they have been published

New Hampshire’s page lists the per-measure caps, and they are worth reading as the shape of the program rather than as a promise for your state:

Above those sits the number everyone quotes: “There is a maximum rebate amount of $14,000 for projects that include multiple appliances for the household.” New Mexico states the same ceiling as “a maximum rebate of $14,000 per address”.

Notice that the $8,000 in this table is a heat pump cap inside the appliance program. It is not the $8,000 that belongs to HOMES, which is a whole-home modeled-savings figure from a different program. Two different rebates, two different rules, one identical number. If you have seen a page adding those two $8,000 figures together, that page was written by someone reading quickly.

“Live” does not mean available

This is the part with no equivalent anywhere else, and it is the reason this site records a status rather than a yes or no.

New Mexico is open. Its page says federal rebates “are now available to income-eligible New Mexico residents”, and several measures carry an Apply Now link, including the $4,000 electric service panel upgrade. But the same table marks the heat pump line, the $8,000 one, as coming soon. The page says outright that “the program is being launched in phases, so not all products are available yet”.

So a New Mexico household reading a national guide would learn their state is live, that heat pumps are covered up to $8,000, and that they earn little enough to qualify. All three statements are true. The rebate is still not available to them this week.

New Hampshire is more straightforward and no more encouraging. Its page opens with “Coming Soon” and says the program “is expected to launch Fall 2026”, with rebates available only for projects started after the program officially opens. Starting work early does not get backdated.

The federal page cannot tell you where you stand

The Energy Department’s own status section reads: “Home Energy Rebates are now available in select states. Additional details on active state, territory or Tribal rebate programs are coming soon. Contact your State or Territory Energy Office for more information on the status and eligibility requirements.”

That is the whole answer available at the federal level. Which states, which measures, which income rule: none of it is there. It is not an oversight so much as an accurate description of how the program was built, and it is why a fifty-one row board with dates on it is the only honest way to present this.

What to do with this

1. Find your state energy office’s own page for the program. Not an aggregator, not an installer, not this page. The state page is the only one that binds.
2. Read its income rule before anything else, and check whether it names 80% or 150%, and whether the 80% to 150% band is paid at a reduced rate.
3. Check the specific measure you want for a “coming soon” marker. A state being open tells you nothing about your appliance.
4. Check whether your work must be done by a registered contractor. New Mexico requires an Authorized Program Contractor for its measures, and heat pump installers there must additionally be certified by the EPA and the state’s Construction Industries Division.

When your state opens, or changes its rules, the board on Is it open in my state? is where that gets recorded. If you find something here that does not match what your state told you, especially if you were turned away after reading that you qualified, please write in. That is the most useful correction this site can get.

What is not confirmed here

• The income rules for the other forty-eight states. Two states are two data points. They are enough to show the rule varies and not enough to predict yours. Do not read New Hampshire’s 150% as a national floor.
• Whether New Mexico’s heat pump measure has opened since this check. It was marked coming soon on the verification date at the top of this page.
• HOMES availability anywhere. Everything above about live programs concerns the appliance rebate. Whether any state is currently paying HOMES rebates was not checked here.
• The federal statutory sections. The department’s page names the programs but not their sections of the Inflation Reduction Act, and no section number is asserted here because none was read at the source.