LIHEAP buys equipment too, and HEAR is about to buy less

There is an obvious way to sort these two programs. LIHEAP is the one for a bill you cannot pay. HEAR is the one for equipment you want to replace. Pick the door that matches the problem.

The obvious sort costs people money, for a reason that has nothing to do with either program being complicated. In two of the three states checked here, the first door is the credential that opens the second one, and a household that picks correctly the first time never finds that out.

Nine pages were read for this article, all on the verification date at the top. Here is where the line actually falls, and where it does not.

Bill assistance is not only about bills

The federal page describes LIHEAP as reducing “the costs associated with home energy bills, energy crises, weatherization, and minor energy-related home repairs”. Under heating assistance it lists help with making homes more energy efficient and with repairing or replacing heating equipment. Bills are the first item on that list, not the whole list.

Virginia shows what that means at the counter. Its Energy Assistance Program has four components, and two of them buy equipment outright.

Two notes on that table before it gets used for anything. Virginia’s page never uses the word LIHEAP; it calls the whole thing the Energy Assistance Program. And the weatherization row is a different program from the other three, run by a different department, which is why it is treated separately from the bill components everywhere below. New Mexico and Georgia both list the Weatherization Assistance Program and LIHEAP as two distinct entries on their eligibility lists, so they are not interchangeable and are not treated as such here.

Set the middle two rows against a HEAR measure list and the overlap is real. Heat pump repair, cooling equipment, installation. The same categories, paid for out of a different pot, on a different calendar.

The appliance rebate is not only about appliances

The mirror image holds. The Energy Department describes the appliance rebate as covering “insulation, air sealing, ventilation, electric wiring and load service center upgrades, electric heating and cooling upgrades, and efficient electric appliances”, and says the design emphasises “the importance of insulating and sealing the home prior to upgrading heating and cooling to maximize savings”. A good deal of that is building envelope work rather than an appliance.

What none of the pages read here describes is a HEAR route to an unpaid bill. There is no arrears component, no crisis provision and no shut-off route on any of them. New Mexico is the one that spells out where the money goes. Once eligibility is determined you receive a coupon to present to a retailer or installer, who deducts the rebate from the purchase price, and for measures needing a contractor the rebate is paid to the contractor rather than to you. The federal page says the same thing more briefly, that the rebates are offered “at point of sale either at retail outlets or through contractors”.

Where the line actually falls

New Mexico adds a rule to the first row that is worth knowing before you buy anything. Its page says you must meet the housing and income requirements “and apply through the HEAR program prior to purchase”. That is a New Mexico sentence, not a national one. Georgia’s page describes the opposite sequence, telling households they “will need to show proof of purchase, installation, income documentation” to participate. New Hampshire has not decided, and says so: the process for submitting and delivering a rebate “will be determined prior to the official launch date”.

New Hampshire has not decided because New Hampshire has not opened. Its page opens with Coming Soon, expects to launch in Fall 2026, and states that funding “is not yet available to New Hampshire consumers”. Nothing below treats it as a live program, and neither should you.

An approved LIHEAP application can be the credential that opens HEAR

This is the part that appears on neither federal page.

Both of the HEAR states here with a published categorical list name LIHEAP on it. New Mexico sets the income test as earning less than 80% of your county’s area median income “or participate in specific state or federal benefit programs”, then lists them, and LIHEAP is on the list alongside Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, Head Start, WIC and the Weatherization Assistance Program. Georgia’s eligibility page says the state “will also consider categorical eligibility during the income verification process” and that a household with at least one member in a listed program “can use a benefit letter to qualify”. LIHEAP is the first entry on Georgia’s list, which also runs to Lifeline, the free National School Lunch Program and the ALICE measure.

So in those two states a LIHEAP approval letter does work that a stack of tax documents would otherwise have to do. Georgia’s document list for a household without that letter runs to a federal tax return or W-2, tax documentation for self-employment income, and proof of unemployment where relevant, covering every income source from the previous year.

That advantage is not advertised on the bill-assistance side at all. The federal LIHEAP page does not mention the rebates. Nothing there tells a recipient the letter in their hand is worth anything at the other agency.

It is also not something to assume. New Hampshire describes its eligibility purely as an area median income band and names no benefit-program route, though its program has not launched and its rules are not final. Two published lists out of two is a reason to look for one in your own state, not a reason to expect it.

Georgia has put a date on the part of HEAR most people want

Georgia’s program carries a notice that changes what the rebate is for.

Its update page states that on May 29, 2026 the Energy Department issued updated guidance for the Home Energy Rebates, that the guidance “must be implemented by August 31, 2026”, and that to meet the requirement fuel-switching scopes of work must be submitted online by 10:00 am ET on August 10, 2026, with the homeowner profile attached to each project submitted by the same deadline. After that, the page says, “fuel switching projects will no longer be accepted, and only electric-to–higher-efficiency electric upgrades will be eligible”.

Fuel switching is what a great many readers arrive wanting. Replacing a gas furnace with a heat pump is a fuel switch. Georgia’s page addresses applicants directly and tells anyone working with a contractor on a fuel-switching project, or applying for a do-it-yourself rebate that involves one, to get everything in before the date.

The Energy Department’s own resources page confirms the document and what it governs, listing Program Notice 26-2 as guidance on program requirements for states and territories designing and implementing the high-efficiency electric home rebate programs, with Notice 26-1 covering the whole-home rebate and Notice 26-3 covering the same appliance rebate for Indian Tribes. That page carries no dates. The May 29, 2026 issuance and the August 31, 2026 implementation deadline appear on Georgia’s page and nowhere else that was read here, so both are reported above as Georgia’s account of the guidance rather than as a reading of it.

What no page read here establishes is which other states are doing the same thing, or when. Georgia published a deadline. Whether yours has one is a question only its own page can answer, and the answer is worth having this week rather than next.

The page that lists what is eligible does not carry the date

Georgia’s eligible-measures page states the current rule in the form of what is barred. “Replacing an existing electric appliance with a new electric appliance is not allowed! Replacing an electric kitchen appliance with an induction appliance is not allowed.” It then carves out two exceptions, for upgrading an electric clothes dryer to a heat pump clothes dryer and an electric tank water heater to a heat pump water heater.

Read that beside the update page and the two are not in conflict, but they are badly matched. The measures page tells a reader what the program will pay for today. It says nothing in that section about the route most of its readers want closing in days. The deadline is on the page, as a headline in the strip above the content, in the slot that on Georgia’s eligibility page holds a fraud warning instead. The rule section itself does not mention it, and the rule section is the part a search result drops you into. That is the same reading problem as Pennsylvania’s closed LIHEAP season under a still-current banner, in a milder form and running in the other direction.

New Mexico’s page disagrees with itself about the $8,000 heat pump

While checking the categorical list, the same page turned out to answer the availability question twice, differently.

New Mexico’s HEAR page carries two tables of the same measures. The first, under the heading asking what rebates are offered as part of the HEAR program, marks the heat pump water heater, air sealing upgrades and the central or mini-split air source heat pump systems as Coming Soon. The second, further down under the question of what the program covers, marks every one of those as Apply Now, and adds a separate mini-split row also marked Apply Now. The $8,000 heat pump rebate is therefore both available and not available, depending how far down the page you read.

An earlier article here used that heat pump line as its example of a state being open while the measure a reader wants is not. On this check the example no longer holds cleanly, and that article has been amended to say so. The underlying point survives in a worse form. The page a reader is sent to cannot tell them whether the largest rebate on it is switched on.

Everything else on the New Mexico page held. The program launched on September 3, 2024, the maximum is $14,000 per address, and heat pump installers must be certified by the EPA and the state’s Construction Industries Division. The page’s income figures are a statewide illustration rather than a lookup: it prints a New Mexico area median income of $78,000 and a table running from $44,200 or less for a single-person household to $63,100 or less for a household of four, then tells you the test is 80% of your own county’s figure and links out to find it.

The two income tests are measured against different things

One row measures against a national poverty figure. The other three measure against what the neighbours earn. Those are different denominators, so passing one test tells you nothing about the other in either direction, and whether a household sits inside or outside a given line can have more to do with local house prices than with anything about that household.

Nor is the poverty-level row a national LIHEAP rule. Four state pages read for a separate article gave four different ways of writing the same test, from a poverty-level percentage to a flat dollar table with no percentage named at all.

What to do with this

1. If you are on LIHEAP, check your state’s HEAR eligibility page for a categorical list before you assemble any income paperwork. In New Mexico and Georgia the letter you already have is on it.
2. If you want a fuel switch, find out this week whether your state has published a deadline for it. Georgia’s is August 10, 2026, and Georgia says the guidance behind it is federal and carries an August 31, 2026 implementation date. No other state page was checked here, so treat that as a reason to look rather than as an answer about your own state.
3. Do not treat a LIHEAP decision as an answer about equipment, or a HEAR decision as an answer about a bill. Different agency, different money, different test.
4. If your problem is an unpaid bill or a shut-off notice, nothing on the HEAR pages read here is aimed at it. The rebate reaches a till or a contractor, not a household.
5. Read the whole state page, not the section that answers your question. New Mexico’s contradicts itself between one section and another, and Georgia’s deadline is on a different page from the rule it changes.

Where each state stands as it gets checked is recorded on Is it open in my state?. If your state told you something that contradicts what is here, especially if you were turned away after reading that you qualified, or if you were told a fuel-switching project was still eligible after a deadline, write in. A correction is the most useful thing this site can receive.

What is not confirmed here

• The contents of Program Notice 26-2. The notice was not read. The Energy Department’s resources page confirms it exists and that it governs the appliance rebate programs for states and territories, and carries no dates. Everything above about fuel switching is Georgia’s account of the guidance, on Georgia’s own page, and no wording from the notice itself is quoted.
• Whether other states have set a fuel-switching deadline, and when. Only Georgia’s was read. The August 31, 2026 implementation date it cites is described by Georgia as federal, which would put other states on the same clock, but no other state page was checked and none should be assumed.
• The categorical eligibility lists in the other forty-seven states. Three HEAR states were read. Two publish a list naming LIHEAP. The third publishes no such route, and has not opened its program, so its silence is not evidence of a decision.
• Whether Virginia’s Energy Assistance Program is the LIHEAP-funded one. The federal LIHEAP page states that grant recipients administer the program and does not name Virginia’s. Virginia’s page does not use the word LIHEAP. The two are discussed together above because they cover the same ground, and no funding relationship between them is asserted from these pages.
• Whether Georgia’s HEAR is otherwise taking applications normally. The page describes an application process and a deadline for one category of project. No overall opening or closing date for the program was found on the pages read, and nothing is claimed here about the state of the wider queue.
• Which of New Mexico’s two tables is right. The page carries both. Nothing on it says which was updated more recently, and no attempt was made to resolve the contradiction by contacting the program.
• Whether a LIHEAP letter is accepted in practice. Both state pages say the letter can be used in place of an income calculation. What a reviewer does with one is not something a page can verify.
• Equipment help under bill assistance outside Virginia. The federal page describes weatherization and equipment repair as part of the program nationally, and one state’s components were read to see what that looks like at the counter. The other states set their own.