The Federal EV-Charger Credit Is Gone. What Still Pays

TL;DR

• The federal 30C charger credit expired June 30, 2026. Do not quote it.
• Utility rebates survived: up to $700 standard, up to $1,000 in EJ or low-income tiers.
• Rebates now hinge on qualified-product lists and managed-charging enrollment.
• National Grid tells customers to act by December 31, 2026 before terms change.

The federal tax credit for a home EV charger, 30 percent of cost up to $1,000 under Section 30C, expired for equipment placed in service after June 30, 2026, and no extension is pending. What survived in Massachusetts is the utility rebate, which pays up to $700 toward wiring for a standard single-family customer and up to $1,000 in an Environmental Justice community or on a low-income rate. The difference matters more than the dollar amounts, because a tax credit is something the homeowner claims later and a utility rebate is something the installer can destroy at the point of sale by hanging the wrong charger.

That is the shift almost nobody has absorbed. The incentive stopped being a tax question and became a compliance question, and the compliance is yours.

What expired, and what Massachusetts still pays

Section 30C is done. A charger had to be placed in service, wired and working, on or before June 30, 2026 to qualify. Purchase date did not count, order date did not count. The vehicle-side federal credits went first, expiring for cars acquired after September 30, 2025, so there is now no federal money in a Massachusetts home-charging project at all.

The credit was also narrower than the coverage suggested while it lived. It applied only when the property sat in a low-income community or a non-urban census tract, which excluded much of the eastern Massachusetts suburb belt where EV ownership actually concentrates. Plenty of installers spent the spring promising a credit their customers were never eligible for. If your mailers or website still quote it, that is the first thing to fix.

The state-level picture, meanwhile, is intact and not small. Here is what the two large investor-owned utilities publish for residential charging.

Serving utility	Customer class	Wiring / panel rebate	Charger rebate
National Grid	Single-family, standard	Up to $700	None
National Grid	Single-family, EJ community or low-income R-2	Up to $1,000	Up to $700, R-2 only
National Grid	2–4 unit building, standard	Up to $1,400	None
National Grid	2–4 unit building, EJ or low-income	Up to $2,000	None
Eversource	Single household, standard	Up to $700	Included in tier
Eversource	Single household, EJ community	Up to $1,000	Included in tier
Eversource	Single household, discount rate	Up to $1,700 combined	Combined
Eversource	2–4 units, discount rate	Up to $2,700 combined	Combined

Two notes before you quote any of this. National Grid's enhanced tiers require the household's EV to carry an MSRP of $55,000 or less, the same threshold MOR-EV uses for its $3,500 vehicle rebate. And Unitil serves a slice of the state on its own terms, so confirm the serving utility from the address rather than assuming.

Territory now matters more than census tract. The old federal map is irrelevant; the map that decides the offer is which utility bills the house.

The three ways an installer kills the rebate

This is the section worth the read. Each of these is a live disqualifier, and each one sits in the installer's hands rather than the homeowner's.

The charger is not on the list. Eversource requires a Wi-Fi capable Level 2 smart charger of 80 amps or less that appears on its Qualified Product List. Install a perfectly good unit that is not on that list and the customer gets nothing. The utility moved to a Qualified Product List in 2026, replacing the older appliance database, so a model that qualified in 2024 is not automatically fine today.

The customer never enrolls. Effective March 2, 2026, Eversource requires customers receiving a charger or wiring rebate to enroll in its Managed Charging program. National Grid requires single-family customers to enroll in Off-Peak Charging, worth roughly $100 a year on its own, and exempts landlords of 2–4 unit buildings from that requirement. An install that finishes without enrollment is an install that does not pay.

The paperwork misses the window. National Grid work completed during 2026 has to be applied for by March 31, 2027, and payment typically lands 60 to 90 days after enrollment is confirmed. Customers who assume the rebate is automatic find out months later that it was not.

None of this is exotic. It is the kind of thing an installer who does this weekly knows and a homeowner comparing three quotes does not. Being the one who explains it is a real differentiator, and it is more durable than a deadline.

The permit signals that flag EV-ready homeowners

Three permit patterns reliably surface EV-ready homes in the data permits.llc aggregates.

Permit type	Why it's an EV signal	Optimal outreach window
Garage construction or EV-charger permit	A new garage is where a charger lives; the EV permit is the install itself	Weeks 1–6
Electrical service-upgrade permit	A panel upgrade prepares the home for the added 240-volt load	Weeks 1–6
Heat pump or generator permit	An electrification-minded household, a strong EV-charger prospect	Weeks 1–8

Garage and EV-charger permits are the most direct signal. A homeowner building a garage is creating the natural home for a charger, and the cheapest time to run the circuit is during the build.

Service-upgrade permits mark a home being prepared for more electrical load. A homeowner filing an electrical service upgrade is often planning for an EV, a heat pump, or both. That permit is also the one that tells you whether the panel can carry a charger at all, which is the question that decides your quote.

Heat pump and generator permits flag households already spending on their energy systems. A permit is a signal about the homeowner, not the contractor who pulled it, and someone who just electrified their heating has demonstrated exactly the disposition a charger sale needs.

When to reach out now that the sprint is over

The urgency changed shape. There is no longer a cliff in June, so the frantic tone that worked in the spring now reads as a stale template.

What replaced it is a softer year-end date. National Grid's program page tells customers to act by December 31, 2026 because incentive levels are expected to change in 2027, and its published terms cover work completed through that date. Work backward from there. A garage or service-upgrade permit filed in August leaves comfortable room; one filed in November, against permitting and scheduling and the holidays, does not.

The standard permit timing still governs. Weeks 1 through 6 after the filing is when the project is live and the electrical work is being planned, which is when a charger is a decision rather than an afterthought. Older permits in the file are still workable now, because the constraint is no longer a hard federal date. Scoring permit leads by what the record actually tells you helps sort which of those older filings still deserve a touch.

What to say in your outreach

Reference the EV-ready project, name the real number for that address, and say nothing about the federal credit.

Sample letter, garage or service-upgrade permit, National Grid territory

Dear [Homeowner Name],

My name is Dev Patel at Bay State EV Charging here in [county]. I noticed you recently [built a garage / upgraded your electrical service], which means your home is well set up for a Level 2 charger.

One thing worth knowing: the federal charger tax credit ended June 30, so anything you read about a $1,000 credit is out of date. What is still available is the National Grid rebate, up to $700 toward the wiring at your address, and more if you are on the discount rate. It requires enrolling in off-peak charging and using a qualified charger, which I handle as part of the job so the rebate does not fall through.

I can take care of the permit and the install. Happy to send a quick quote. You can reach me at (781) 555-0188.

Dev Patel Bay State EV Charging | [County], MA

Correcting the homeowner's outdated information is the move. Half of them have read a 2025 article about the federal credit and think they missed nothing. Being the person who tells them the truth, and then names a real number that still applies, earns the call back.

How exclusivity works for EV installers

permits.llc assigns leads on a non-compete county basis: one business per niche per county, held until cancel. An EV-charger business that claims a county holds the garage, service-upgrade, and electrification permit signals for its niche in that county exclusively, so no competing EV installer on the platform receives the same feed there.

Exclusivity matters differently now. Under the old deadline it prevented a price war inside a finite window. Today it protects a slower, more consultative sale, where the value is knowing which charger qualifies in which territory and walking the customer through enrollment. That conversation does not survive three installers calling the same house.

Because EV-charger demand rides on garage, heat-pump, and service-upgrade volume, a single suburban county usually supplies steady work; some installers hold several adjacent counties to expand. See how county exclusivity works for the mechanics.

How permits.llc fits in

permits.llc aggregates 380,000+ Massachusetts permit records across 140+ cities and 13 counties, refreshed daily from official municipal portals. When a homeowner files a garage, service-upgrade, heat-pump, or generator permit, that record enters the system within 24 hours, is matched against the EV and electrification categories, and routes to the exclusive county holder with the property address, permit type, and filed date attached.

Start with the free 2026 dataset: download every 2025 Massachusetts garage, electrical, and mechanical permit and map the EV-ready homes in your county at the free MA permit download. When you want those filings as they land, set up daily alerts for your county and work them against the December 31 date while the current rebate levels hold.