RebateStack

The IRA heat-pump rebate stacker — every federal, state, utility, and manufacturer dollar you qualify for, in one number, in the order you have to claim them.

Date: 2026-05-17 Form factor: Web app (single-page; mobile-friendly) Status: Prototype

What it is

RebateStack is a single-page workspace that turns the alphabet soup of US home-electrification incentives — federal 25C, HEEHRA, HOMES, state income-tax credits, utility on-bill rebates, and manufacturer promos — into one total dollar amount and a step-by-step application sequence. The user picks a household profile (or, later, their own ZIP + income + equipment), and the app shows the live rebate stack, the per-program rationale, the application order with timing requirements, and the watch-outs that most often cause a claim to be denied.

The prototype demonstrates the end-to-end flow on five fully-modeled households spanning the four eligibility patterns that drive most denial cases: a moderate-income California household stacking the new HEEHRA-CA + utility + manufacturer rebate, a low-income Buffalo retrofit where the federal credit is wasted because there's no tax liability, a Worcester couple over the 150% AMI cap that loses HEEHRA but still recovers a third of cost via Mass Save, a Minnesota family electrifying three appliances at once under the $14,000 lifetime HEEHRA cap, and a Houston household whose state hasn't launched HEEHRA yet — $6,500 on the table if they can wait until Q4 2026.

Who it serves

Any US homeowner who has just gotten an HVAC, water-heater, or panel-upgrade quote in spring 2026 and is trying to figure out what they actually pay net of rebates. Specifically the audiences who are most often steered into a higher net cost than they need to bear:

• Moderate-income households (80–150% AMI) who fall on the wrong side of HEEHRA's "100% covered" line but qualify for the 50% tier. They tend to either skip HEEHRA entirely (assuming they don't qualify) or claim it without realizing utility and manufacturer rebates still stack on top.
• Low-income retiree or fixed-income households with no federal income tax liability. They're routinely advised to "take the 25C credit" by contractors who don't realize the credit is non-refundable. The credit is wasted; HEEHRA isn't — but the contractor has to file it at point-of-sale.
• Affluent households above 150% AMI in HEEHRA-ineligible territory. They're told HEEHRA disqualification means "no rebates" — which ignores HOMES, state programs (Mass Save, NYSERDA), and manufacturer promotions worth $10k–$17k.
• Texas, Florida, and Georgia residents in states where HEEHRA is either still in design or has been opted out of. The single best advice is "wait if you can" — and most contractors aren't going to give that advice.

The pain is concrete and recurring. Over the next 24 months, ~10M US households will replace HVAC or water-heating equipment, and DOE's own program rollout has been described as "exceedingly difficult to navigate without expert help" in the agency's Q4 2025 stakeholder briefings. Households leave $3,000–$8,000 on the table per project on average — and the contractor's interest is faster close, not maximum rebate.

Why it could be profitable

Monetization is freemium with a paid contractor handoff and a B2B white-label:

• Free: stack calculator + application-sequence plan + watch-outs for one project per session. No account.
• Pro ($29 one-time per project): pre-filled HEEHRA registration packet, IRS Form 5695 worksheet, state-credit forms, utility-portal walkthrough screenshots, and a contractor-validation checklist. Pays for itself if it saves even an hour of admin time.
• Contractor lead handoff ($60–120 / lead): once a household has a verified rebate-stack quote, they can request 1–3 vetted contractors. Contractors pay per lead. The household never pays for the introduction.
• B2B white-label ($299/mo): utilities, state energy offices, electrification non-profits, and credit unions running heat-pump-loan programs embed RebateStack into their own portals. They already spend $30–$60 per call to their call center to explain rebate eligibility; RebateStack replaces that.

Demand math: ~10M residential HVAC + water-heater replacements per year × 25% of households who'd use a calculator before signing × $29 average Pro conversion at 3% would clear $2.2M ARR before lead handoffs. The contractor handoff is the larger pool — at $80/lead and 0.5M referred leads/year that's $40M of TAM.

The regulatory tailwind is strong but time-limited: state HEEHRA programs launched on different dates between November 2025 and April 2026, and federal funding for HEEHRA is appropriated through September 2031 — but the Trump-administration FY27 budget proposal in March 2026 sought to claw back unobligated HEEHRA balances. That uncertainty is itself a wedge for a tool that helps households claim what's available now.

Form factor & scope

Single-page web app, sized for mobile and desktop. The prototype is scope-locked to the rebate-stacking workflow — it does not search for contractors, does not file forms on the user's behalf, and is not a financing or loan-origination product. The minimum viable scope demonstrated here is:

1. Pick a household profile (sample).
2. See the live rebate stack (federal + state + utility + manufacturer) with per-program rationale.
3. See the project cost and net out-of-pocket.
4. See the application sequence — point-of-sale steps before install, post-install steps with timing windows, and tax-year steps.
5. See the watch-outs that most commonly cause a claim to be denied for households with this exact profile.
6. Copy or download a plain-text plan suitable for emailing to a contractor or saving with the project paperwork.

How to run it

1. Open index.html in any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari).
2. Pick any household from the left rail. The headline, rebate stack, equipment panel, application sequence, and watch-outs update together.
3. Use Copy plan to put the full plan on the clipboard. Use Download .txt to save it as a file you can email to a contractor or attach to a rebate application.

No build step, no API keys, no accounts. The sample data is embedded inside index.html as a <script type="application/json"> block, so the page works directly from file:// with no local server.

What's in this prototype

• Stack engine that surfaces every program a household qualifies for and notes when one explicitly excludes another (HEEHRA vs. HOMES on the same measure).
• Five fully-modeled households: Pasadena CA (moderate), Buffalo NY (LMI, no tax liability), Worcester MA (above 150% AMI), St. Paul MN (multi-appliance retrofit), Houston TX (pre-launch HEEHRA state).
• Rebate-program reference built into sample-data.json for federal 25C, HEEHRA (with state launch status), HOMES, state credits across CA/NY/MA/MN/CO/TX, seven utility programs, and spring 2026 manufacturer promos.
• Application sequence engine that orders rebate claims by their hard timing constraints — point-of-sale (HEEHRA), 30 days (manufacturer), 60–90 days (utility), tax year (25C + state).
• Per-household watch-out feed — the household-specific gotchas (no tax liability, lifetime cap usage, contractor-list eligibility, recycling-receipt requirements).
• Copy / Download plan that produces a clean plain-text version suitable for emailing or attaching to the rebate paperwork.

Roadmap

• Replace the household picker with a 90-second wizard: ZIP → income → equipment chosen → recompute live.
• Add a contractor-search panel that ranks contractors by state Qualified Contractor List membership, AHRI cert, and manufacturer authorization (Mitsubishi MVP, Carrier Authorized Dealer, etc.).
• Add HOMES energy-modeling pre-check: estimate whether the project clears the 20% or 35% savings thresholds before paying for a formal modeler.
• Add a "rebate-stack PDF" export branded for B2B partners (utilities, credit unions, electrification non-profits).
• Add Mexico- and Canada-side analogs (Hydro-Québec heat-pump rebate, BC Hydro, CFE in MX) to support cross-border installer audiences in the Northwest and Southwest.

Sources

• Inflation Reduction Act, Pub. L. 117-169, §§ 50121 (HOMES) and 50122 (HEEHRA) — statutory basis for the two DOE-administered rebate programs.
• 26 U.S.C. § 25C — Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit — federal annual cap structure ($2,000 / $1,200 / $600).
• DOE Home Energy Rebate Programs — state status tracker — canonical state-by-state launch status used to label HEEHRA as live or pre-launch.
• IRS Form 5695 instructions (2025/2026 update) — manufacturer-PIN requirement effective 2026 and the non-refundable nature of 25C.
• Mass Save MVP heat-pump rebate program — used to validate the $10,000 whole-home heat-pump rebate amount and that Mass Save and HEEHRA-MA are administered as separate funding lines.
• NYSERDA Clean Heat program — used to validate the NYSERDA stack-on-top-of-HEEHRA structure under the NY Public Service Commission's 2026 order.