Design a rebate program
Pick an area, set what you'd pay. See what it creates.
A neutral calculation instrument, not a recommendation: no location, methodology, or program shape is preselected, defaulted, or featured. Housing and climate prefills come from public data; the program economics are your own inputs; per-measure cost and lifetime constants are typical estimates. Everything is computed live, in your browser.
Area
Target
Typical home
Measures
Measure targets
Program rules
Pick a state and a county. Set what you'd pay. See what it creates.
The state and county dropdowns load real housing and climate data for the area; the target dropdowns set what a rebate program pays per kW or kWh saved.
Starting assumptions
- Program rules start at a first-year savings basis, a replace-on-burnout baseline, a 0.68 coincidence factor, and a summer peak window. Those are starting points, not recommendations: every one of them is a dropdown you can change.
- Per-measure typical costs and expected useful lives are national-typical estimates, not local prices or your program's own numbers. They are not editable in this version, and the cost figure only affects the percent-of-cost cap.
Reading these numbers
- Baseline type changes what counts as savings. Replace-on-burnout compares against a new, code-minimum replacement. Early retirement is a program concept that credits savings against an existing unit's remaining life, and it needs that unit's age, which this tool does not collect: the deemed pack here prices replace-on-burnout baselines only, and the two physics methods compare against the existing-equipment inputs you set in the panel.
- Coincidence factors translate energy savings into claimable peak-demand savings. By convention here, a smart thermostat earns kWh credit but zero claimable kW.
- Two coincidence-factor conventions are in play across the method columns. The deemed-tables method applies its published summer and winter coincidence factors (0.87 summer, 0.83 winter) inside its own math; the two physics methods multiply by the generic program coincidence factor chosen in the panel (0.68 to start). Part of any peak-kW gap between the columns is that definitional difference, not a physics disagreement.
- First-year and lifetime are different savings bases. Lifetime multiplies first-year savings by a measure's own expected useful life, so switching the basis changes the rebate math, not just the display.
- Caps apply in a fixed order: a percent-of-cost ceiling binds per measure first, then a per-project ceiling binds on the summed home total. A single home can trip both.
- Winter peak windows exist alongside summer ones. A program priced only against a summer peak window can miss winter-peaking measures and homes.
- Program payments still face a real ceiling in practice: what a program can afford to pay per kW or kWh has a practical upper bound (an avoided-cost ceiling) that these numbers do not enforce. Treat an unusually high effective rate as a flag to check, not a target.
Methodology
- Degree-day method: fixed 65°F balance point
- Modified bin method: home-specific balance point from internal and solar gains
- Deemed tables (state TRM): published per-measure tables where a state pack exists
Census ACS, NREL (CC-BY 4.0), NOAA/NCEI, EIA
Estimates for program-design exploration, not an offer or engineering guidance.
After you publish
What happens after you publish a program
From publishing a design through enrollment, verification, and contractor payment: the full lifecycle, in order.
You
Design and publish
Pick a service area anywhere in the country, a savings methodology (deemed tables, degree-day, or modified-bin), the measures you want to fund, and a budget. Every number is computed live as you choose.
Try the designer→Lock the design and open enrollment. Residents in your service area get a public application page; you get a live dashboard of every application, offer, and payment as it moves.
Residents
Enroll and audit
A resident signs up with their address. Eligibility is checked against the program's service area before anything else happens.
See the live application→The resident uploads a few phone photos. An AI inspection reviews them against the program's checklist: insulation depth, equipment age and type, home characteristics.
The engine values each eligible upgrade under your program's methodology and shows the resident a concrete offer: what's approved, estimated savings, and approximately what rebate their contractor would be paid.
Work is done by an approved contractor the resident chooses. The rebate is paid directly to that contractor once work is verified, never to the resident.
Contractors + engine
Deliver and settle
The contractor submits detailed pre-work documentation: measurements, existing equipment, and the exact installation specifics the visual audit estimated.
Anything photos can't determine deterministically is resolved by the program administrator, so every rebate is settled on verified inputs, not guesses.
The first half of the rebate is staged to the contractor and the work starts, so contractors aren't floating the program's cost.
The contractor submits after-photos and completed-work details. The engine re-values the job as built and clears the contractor's final payment.