Almost everything written about California heat pump rebates before this year is now wrong, including what used to be on this page. Four separate funding sources closed or ran dry between April 2024 and February 2026, and the federal tax credit that anchored most of those articles expired at the end of 2025.
What follows is what a California homeowner can actually claim in 2026, and what has gone.
The short version
The federal 25C tax credit has expired, and equipment had to be placed in service on or before 31 December 2025 to have qualified. The two big statewide programmes, TECH Clean California and HEEHRA, are both fully reserved.
Local utility rebates are what remain, and several of them are worth real money. A San Mateo homeowner can still claim $1,500 on a heat pump. A City of Santa Clara homeowner can claim up to $10,000. A homeowner three streets away on PG&E electricity can claim neither.
That last point is the one that matters: what you can claim depends on who supplies your electricity, not on your county and not on your city.
What has ended
Take these off your list. Any article or contractor still quoting them is working from an old page.
- Federal 25C, the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit. Terminated by the legislation signed in July 2025. Equipment had to be placed in service on or before 31 December 2025, so a system installed in 2026 does not qualify. If you installed in 2025 or earlier, speak to your CPA about claiming it for that tax year.
- Federal 25D, the Residential Clean Energy Credit. The 30% solar credit went the same way. The IRS states it “is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025.”
- TECH Clean California. Fully reserved statewide. No new single family reservations since November 2025.
- HEEHRA. Fully reserved. Income verification for single family projects closed in February 2026. There is a waitlist, but no funding behind it today.
- BayREN Home+ heat pump and heat pump water heater rebates. Ended April 2024. BayREN still runs other measures, so it is worth checking what is currently funded rather than assuming.
- Electrify Marin. Closed permanently after roughly $1.4 million in rebates. Marin County says it “is now closed and will not accept new applications.”
The question that decides everything: who sends your electricity bill?
Most of California is now served by a community choice aggregator rather than by PG&E directly. The aggregator buys the power, PG&E still delivers it, and the aggregator runs its own rebate programme with its own rules and its own budget.
Two neighbours in adjacent towns can therefore qualify for completely different amounts, which is why generic advice about California rebates is close to useless. Look at your bill first.
What is available in 2026, by supplier
MCE, most of Marin County
Serves twelve Marin communities including San Rafael, Novato, Mill Valley, Larkspur, San Anselmo, Sausalito and Tiburon.
- Up to $675 toward a heat pump water heater
- Up to $400 per 500 square feet of your home toward heat pump heating and cooling, so roughly $1,200 on a 1,500 square foot house
You have to own and have lived in a single family detached home for at least 12 months, and the work has to go through a licensed participating contractor.
The trap worth knowing about. If you already have solar, battery storage or EV charging, it must have been installed at least 12 months ago. And you cannot install any of those things for 12 months after the heat pump goes in. In Marin, where a great many homes already have solar and plenty of owners are planning a battery next, getting that sequence wrong is the most common way to lose the rebate.
Sonoma Clean Power, Sonoma and Mendocino counties
Serves Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Cotati, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Windsor, Cloverdale and others.
- $1,000 back on a heat pump for heating and cooling
- For CARE and FERA customers, an enhanced rebate covering 50% of the project cost remaining after all other rebates, up to $10,000
One rebate per equipment type per account, and applications must go in within 90 days of the project finishing. Tell your contractor at the quote stage if you intend to claim, because 90 days goes quickly once the work is done.
WestLight Energy, formerly Peninsula Clean Energy, San Mateo County
Note the name change. It serves San Mateo County and the City of Los Banos.
- $1,500 for a heat pump HVAC system replacing a gas furnace
- $3,500 for a heat pump water heater replacing a gas water heater, or $500 replacing an electric resistance one
- An extra $1,000 for CARE and FERA customers
Two heat pump HVAC and two water heater rebates per electric account. First come, first served while funds last. Terms last updated May 2026.
Silicon Valley Power, City of Santa Clara only
Santa Clara runs its own municipal utility, which is why its rebates are in a different league and why PG&E customers a few streets away cannot touch them. Check your bill rather than assuming, because the boundary is the city line.
- $3,000 per ton, up to $10,000, for a heat pump HVAC system replacing a gas furnace
- $1,000 per system replacing electric resistance heat
- $5,500 for a heat pump water heater converting from gas, or $500 replacing an electric resistance one
- Income qualified bonuses of $500 per system through FRAP or LIHEAP
First come, first served while funds last, and applications go in within 60 days of purchase. The programme year runs from 1 July to 30 June, so the budget resets each summer and runs down through the year.
The rebate that decides whether the others are any use: your electrical panel
Almost every rebate roundup lists heat pump amounts and stops there. The thing that actually stalls Bay Area heat pump projects is the electrical panel. A heat pump, a heat pump water heater and an induction range together can ask more of a service than a 1960s 100 amp panel was built to give, and a job quoted as a heat pump becomes a heat pump plus a service upgrade.
Silicon Valley Power pays toward exactly that, and the amounts are not small. For City of Santa Clara homes on SVP electricity:
- Up to $4,000 toward a smart electric panel, with a further $1,000 for FRAP or LIHEAP customers
- $1,500 toward a main service panel upgrade as an add-on, plus $500 income qualified
- $500 per new pre-wired circuit, up to four circuits and $2,000
- $750 as an all-electric bonus if the gas meter comes out
Read the “up to” literally on the smart panel. SVP’s programme rules cap the rebate at the actual cost of the upgrade, so it is not a flat $4,000 cheque. The panel has to be 100 to 200 amps with automatic load management, there is one per service address, and you are ineligible if you claimed a panel rebate in the previous five years or the project started before 1 July 2025.
SVP lists these as separate measures on its own rebate table rather than as alternatives to the heat pump rebates, but confirm the combination with SVP before you budget around it.
Outside the City of Santa Clara the picture is thinner. Central Coast Community Energy pays $1,000 toward pre-wiring at either income tier, and Silicon Valley Clean Energy counts pre-wiring inside its $8,750 pot. Most other administrators pay nothing toward panel work at all, which is worth knowing before you assume a rebate covers the whole job.
Silicon Valley Clean Energy, most of Santa Clara County
Serves Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Saratoga, Sunnyvale and unincorporated Santa Clara County. Not the City of Santa Clara, which has its own utility as above.
- Up to $8,750 across heat pump water heaters, heat pump heating and cooling, induction ranges and pre-wiring
- An extra $4,250 for income qualified customers, taking the total to $13,000
We are deliberately not quoting a per appliance SVCE figure here. Three different totals are currently live across SVCE’s own pages, and the only per appliance numbers we could find sit on a flyer dating to 2024 that the newer pages contradict. The $8,750 and $4,250 caps come from SVCE’s own current FAQ and are the figures we are confident in. Ask SVCE, or ask us, for the split before you budget around it.
Central Coast Community Energy, Santa Cruz and Monterey
Serves Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito and San Luis Obispo counties.
- $1,000 for a heat pump water heater, or $1,500 if you are income qualified
- $2,000 for a heat pump HVAC system, or $3,000 if you are income qualified
- $300 for an induction cooktop or range, $1,000 for pre-wiring, and $150 for a portable heat pump space conditioner if you rent
There is a real deadline here. Equipment installed between 1 June 2025 and 30 September 2026 must have its application submitted by 30 September 2026. If you have had a heat pump or heat pump water heater fitted in the last year and have not claimed, that is the date to work back from.
Limits are one water heater and two HVAC rebates per electric account per fiscal year. Income qualified means enrolled in CARE or FERA, or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
Where these numbers come from. 3CE stopped printing the amounts on its own rebate page. The page now shows the eligible appliances and the deadlines but no figures. The amounts above come from 3CE’s Electrify Your Home relaunch flyer, and they sit inside the $150 to $3,000 range the California Community Choice Association quoted when the programme relaunched in September 2025. Confirm with 3CE before you budget around them.
Three things that catch people out
First come, first served is not a formality
Several of these programmes run on an annual budget that genuinely runs out. TECH Clean California and HEEHRA are the cautionary tale. Both were generous, both are now fully reserved, and the waitlists have no money behind them. If a rebate matters to your budget, treat it as something to secure early rather than claim later.
Most programmes require a participating or licensed contractor
MCE requires a licensed participating contractor. Silicon Valley Power only reimburses work performed by a licensed or qualified contractor. Confirm the requirement before work starts, not at the claim stage, because it is not something you can fix afterwards.
Published amounts go stale faster than anyone updates their website
While checking the figures on this page we found two pages on the same utility’s own site contradicting each other about whether a programme had ended, three different headline totals live simultaneously on another, and a third that has stopped publishing its amounts altogether. If a rebate is load bearing in your decision, confirm it with the administrator directly on the day, and be suspicious of any page that does not say when it was last reviewed.
What about the federal credit coming back?
We have no information suggesting it will, and we are not going to speculate. The 25C credit as it existed applied to equipment placed in service on or before 31 December 2025, and nothing installed since qualifies. Plan your budget on the local rebate.
How Bellows helps
Customers apply for these rebates themselves in most cases. What we do is supply the paperwork the application needs, including permits, invoices and AHRI documentation, and pull the permit as part of the job. We will also tell you which programme actually applies to your address before you commit to anything, and if the honest answer is that the rebate is smaller than you had hoped, you will hear that from us at the quote rather than afterwards.
We install heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, ductless mini splits and conventional systems across Marin, Sonoma, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. If you want to know what your address qualifies for, get in touch and we will look it up with you.
You may also want our rebates and financing overview, or the Marin specific breakdown at what is left after Electrify Marin.
Frequently asked questions
Is there still a federal tax credit for heat pumps in California?
No. The federal 25C Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit expired for equipment placed in service after 31 December 2025. A system installed in 2026 does not qualify. If you installed in 2025 or earlier, ask your CPA about claiming it for that tax year.
What happened to TECH Clean California?
It is fully reserved statewide and has not accepted new single family reservations since November 2025. It has not been cancelled, but there is no funding available to new applicants.
Which California heat pump rebate is the largest?
Of the programmes covered here, Silicon Valley Power’s is the largest at up to $10,000 for a heat pump HVAC system replacing a gas furnace, but it is only available to City of Santa Clara residents on SVP electricity. For most other homeowners the realistic range is between $1,000 and $3,500 depending on the supplier and the equipment.
Can I combine rebates?
Sometimes. Utility rebates and income qualified bonuses generally stack within the same programme, and MCE explicitly mentions stacking with other incentives. What has changed is that the large state and federal layers people used to stack on top are gone, so the total is usually one utility rebate plus any income qualified uplift.
Will I need to upgrade my electrical panel for a heat pump?
Often, and it is the most common reason a heat pump quote lands higher than expected. Whether you do depends on the size of your existing service, what is already drawing on it and how the new equipment is specified, so it is a question for the site visit rather than one any website can answer. If you are in the City of Santa Clara on SVP electricity there is real money toward it: up to $4,000 for a smart panel and $1,500 toward a main service upgrade. Everywhere else, budget for panel work as part of the project rather than assuming a rebate absorbs it.
Do I have to use a specific contractor?
Usually you need a licensed contractor, and some programmes require a participating one from their own list. MCE requires a licensed participating contractor. Silicon Valley Power reimburses only work done by a licensed or qualified contractor. Check the requirement before work starts.
How do I find out who supplies my electricity?
Look at your PG&E bill. If a community choice aggregator serves your address, it will be named on the bill as your electricity generation provider, with PG&E still shown for delivery. That name is the one that determines your rebate.
Last reviewed 26 August 2026. Every figure above was taken from the administering utility’s own current page on that date. These programmes change without notice and several run until their funds are exhausted, so confirm current terms before relying on any amount here.
