NHSaves Heat Pump Rebates and the NH Permit Trail

New Hampshire's NHSaves enhanced heat pump rebate rose from $1,250 per ton to $2,000 per ton on March 23, 2026, and it stacks on the standard $250 per ton, so a qualifying electric-resistance replacement now earns $2,250 per ton. The system has to be installed between January 1 and December 30, 2026, with the rebate form postmarked by January 30, 2027. Most published guides to this program still quote the January figure.

TL;DR

• NHSaves enhanced rebate went from $1,250 to $2,000 per ton on March 23, 2026.
• Install by December 30, 2026. Postmark the form by January 30, 2027.
• Federal 25C expired December 31, 2025, so NHSaves is now the whole incentive.
• Electrical permits catch NH heat pump work in all four towns. Mechanical catches Concord only.

What does NHSaves actually pay for a heat pump in 2026?

Two rebates, and the gap between them is large enough to reorganise a sales pitch around.

The standard rebate for an air-source heat pump, ducted or ductless, is $250 per ton of installed capacity. That one is available to any residential customer of the four utilities that deliver NHSaves: Eversource, Liberty, Unitil and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative.

The enhanced rebate is a different animal. It applies only when the heat pump replaces electric resistance heating, and for Eversource, Liberty and Unitil customers it is currently $2,000 per ton. Add the standard $250 and a qualifying job earns $2,250 per ton. On a four-ton whole-home system that is $9,000 against the $1,000 the same customer would collect on a standard swap.

NHEC members sit outside the tiering entirely. Their electric-resistance rebate has been a flat $2,000 per ton all year.

Two smaller ones are worth knowing because they attach to the same visit: a central air conditioner earns $70 per ton, and a Wi-Fi thermostat earns $85 per unit.

Why did the enhanced rebate change in March, and who still has it wrong?

Because NHSaves tiered it by installation date, and the aggregator content that ranks for this keyword mostly froze at the January number.

For Eversource, Liberty and Unitil customers, the enhanced rebate ran at $1,250 per ton from January 1 through March 22, 2026. From March 23 through December 31, 2026 it is $2,000 per ton. Same program, same year, same customer, a $750 per ton difference decided by which side of a March date the install landed on.

Search the term today and you will find national rebate-guide sites confidently reporting a single figure. Some say $1,250 per ton. Some say $2,000. Neither presents it as a tier, and a contractor quoting the wrong one either leaves money on the table or promises a homeowner something they cannot deliver.

There is a second reason the number matters more this year than last. The federal 25C Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit, worth 30% of project cost up to $2,000 on a qualifying heat pump, expired on December 31, 2025 under the One Big Beautiful Bill. Systems placed in service in 2026 get nothing from it. For a New Hampshire homeowner weighing a heat pump this autumn, NHSaves is no longer one incentive among several. It is the incentive.

One requirement gets missed more than any other. The enhanced tier needs an Electric Resistance Pre-Verification, completed at NHSaves.com/GetVerified, before the equipment is installed. Not after. A homeowner who rips out baseboard first and applies later has forfeited the difference.

Which New Hampshire permit actually catches a heat pump install?

The electrical permit, and this is the finding that surprised us.

Our New Hampshire file holds 398 permits whose work description names a heat pump, a mini split, a minisplit or a ductless system. 239 of them were filed in the last twelve months. Here is how they distribute:

Permit type	Records	Towns present	Contractor named	Owner named
Electrical	200	All four	98	100
Mechanical	133	Concord only	0	0
Building	57	Concord, Hampton	49	56
Plumbing	8	Concord, Hampton	1	1

Read the second column before the first. Mechanical is the permit type an HVAC contractor would reach for by instinct, and in New Hampshire it returns Concord and nothing else. Filter that way and you have thrown out Hampton, Exeter and Seabrook without noticing, along with every named contractor and every named owner in the set.

Electrical is the only type that shows up in all four towns. It makes sense once you see it. A heat pump is an electrical load before it is anything else, and the towns that record trade permits separately record the electrical side consistently even when they handle the mechanical side differently or fold it into a building permit.

A caveat we would rather state than bury. This match runs on free-text work descriptions, so it misses jobs described in words we did not search for, and a single installation that pulled both a mechanical and an electrical permit appears twice. Treat 398 as a floor on activity, not a census of installations.

Where do the contractor and owner names actually sit?

Entirely on the Seacoast. Every one of them.

Of the 398 heat pump permits, 148 name a contractor and 157 name an owner. All 148 and all 157 are in Hampton, Exeter or Seabrook. Concord contributes 241 records, more than any other town and 61% of the whole set, and names nobody on any of them.

Town	Heat pump permits	Contractor named	Owner named
Concord	241	0	0
Hampton	115	106	115
Exeter	31	31	31
Seabrook	11	11	11

Exeter and Seabrook name a party on every single record. Hampton names an owner on all 115 and a contractor on 106.

This is a recording practice, not a compliance signal, and the distinction matters enough that we have written about what New Hampshire actually licenses and where names appear separately. A blank contractor field in Concord tells you how Concord keeps its records. It tells you nothing whatsoever about whether the work was done by a licensed trade.

The practical consequence is that the two halves of our New Hampshire file want different tactics. The Seacoast records support direct outreach to a named owner about a specific address. The Concord records support territory work: which streets are seeing heat pump activity, at what rate, and how that compares to the rest of the file. Both are useful. They are not the same product.

When should you work this, and did the March step-up move anything?

Now, and the filing pattern shifted this year in a way worth looking at carefully.

The seasonal case is straightforward. Heating-season intent builds through September and October in New Hampshire, and the install deadline is December 30. A homeowner who starts shopping in November is negotiating with every other homeowner who did the same, against a contractor calendar that has already closed.

The data question is more interesting. Heat pump filings in our file ran 54 in Q1 2025 against 35 in Q1 2026, then 90 across April to July 2025 against 115 across the same months in 2026. That is a 28% lift in the later period and a drop in the earlier one, which is the shape you would expect if the March 23 step-up pulled installs to the far side of the date.

We are not going to tell you that is what happened. The 2025 first quarter is distorted by a single 31-permit February, the whole comparison rests on a few hundred records across four towns, and heat pump demand moves for a dozen reasons that have nothing to do with rebate tiering. What we can say is that the later-year weighting is real in the data and consistent with the incentive design.

If you sell heat pumps in New Hampshire, the useful reading is defensive. A homeowner who heard about a rebate in January heard about $1,250 per ton. Whatever they remember is probably out of date and probably too low.

The behavioural window is short. A permit describing electrical work on an electrically heated home is worth a call inside four weeks, because the pre-verification requirement means the opportunity closes the moment the old system comes out.

What to say in your outreach

Lead with the pre-verification requirement, not with the dollar figure.

The dollar figure is what every competitor will lead with, and a homeowner who has read three rebate guides has three different numbers in their head already. The verification requirement is the thing almost nobody tells them, and it is the thing that can actually cost them money this week.

For a homeowner on an electrically heated Hampton or Exeter property: "If you are replacing electric baseboard or electric furnace heat, NHSaves needs an Electric Resistance Pre-Verification done before the new system goes in. That step is what the extra $2,000 per ton depends on, on top of the standard $250. Once the old heat is out it cannot be verified, so it is worth doing before anything gets scheduled."

For a homeowner who already has a quote: "Check which enhanced rebate figure your installer used. It was $1,250 per ton through March 22 and $2,000 per ton since March 23, and a quote built on the old number understates what you get back."

For a customer who was counting on a federal credit: say it plainly and early. The 25C credit ended December 31, 2025 and does not apply to a 2026 install. Better they hear it from you in August than from an accountant in April.

For anyone weighing a spring install instead: the work has to be finished by December 30 to earn a 2026 rebate, and NHSaves publishes its program year at a time. A 2027 amount is not something you or they can rely on today.

Skip the countdown-clock framing. New Hampshire is a small market, four towns' worth of it in our file, and reputation travels. The date is real and stating it accurately is enough.

How permits.llc fits in

We index New Hampshire permits from Concord, Hampton, Exeter and Seabrook: 12,604 records reaching back to October 2022 and current to within a day or two. That is four towns across two counties, not the whole state, and we would rather you know the shape of it before you buy than after.

For this particular job the shape matters more than the size. The heat pump signal lives in the electrical permit, the names live on the Seacoast, and Concord gives you volume without identity. A permit is a signal about the homeowner, not about the contractor who filed it, and in Concord that signal arrives without a name attached to either party.

The mechanical code angle connects here too, since New Hampshire moved to the 2024 International Mechanical Code this summer and the concurrence window closes December 31, the day after the NHSaves install deadline. Two unrelated deadlines landing a day apart is a coincidence, but it is a useful one for anyone planning autumn capacity. If you want the town-by-town picture first, we have written up how New Hampshire permit records vary by town, and the HVAC contractor playbook covers the trade-level version of this workflow.

To build the list yourself, download the New Hampshire permit data and filter to electrical permits whose work description names a heat pump, a mini split or a ductless system. To see the coverage before committing, browse New Hampshire permits by county, or set up permit alerts so new filings reach you inside the four-week window rather than a season later.

The rebate is worth $2,250 per ton to the right homeowner and $1,000 per ton to the wrong one. Knowing which house is which, before the old heating system comes out, is the entire job.