New Hampshire's utility rebate program is currently paying more to get electric resistance heat out of a house than at any earlier point this year — $2,000 per ton as of August 2026, and only for homeowners who complete one paperwork step before the equipment goes in.
📞 Call (603) 506-4389Last checked: August 6, 2026 • Rebate figures taken from the NHSaves residential electric heating and cooling equipment page and verified August 2026.
If you have spent an evening searching for what New Hampshire pays to replace electric baseboard heat, you have almost certainly read the number $1,250 per ton. That figure was accurate — through March 22, 2026. On March 23 the enhanced rebate for replacing electric resistance heat rose to $2,000 per ton, and a great many contractor blogs, aggregator pages, and rebate roundups still have not caught up. Members of the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative have been at $2,000 per ton for the whole program year.
That gap matters more than a typical pricing quibble, because the difference on a three-ton system is $2,250 in real money, and because homeowners who budget from a stale page tend to also miss the requirement attached to it. The enhanced rebate is not automatic. It requires pre-verification through NHSaves before installation, and skipping that step is the single most reliable way to end up with a new heat pump and no rebate at all.
This page covers one narrow question — swapping electric baseboard for a heat pump in a New Hampshire home — with figures as of August 2026. Programs change mid-year, as March proved, so confirm current terms at nhsaves.com before you sign anything. Amherst HVAC is a referral service, and the licensed, insured local contractors it matches you with handle these conversions week in and week out across Amherst, Milford, Mont Vernon, and Hollis.
Read this part twice. The enhanced electric-resistance rebate requires that your home be pre-verified before the heat pump is installed, through the form at NHSaves.com/GetVerified. The purpose is straightforward — the program is confirming that electric resistance heat is genuinely what the house runs on today — but the consequence of skipping it is not negotiable after the fact. Install first, apply second, and the enhanced tier is simply gone. Homeowners who discover this in February, holding an invoice and a rejection, describe it as the most expensive form they never filled out. Good contractors raise pre-verification unprompted during the quote; if yours has not mentioned it by the time you are discussing install dates, ask directly and get the answer in writing.
Amherst is full of houses that were never built for central anything. An antique colonial near the Village Green, a cape on a back road, an ell or a barn conversion added a century after the original frame went up — none of them have ductwork, and many acquired electric baseboard along the way as the cheap answer to heating a finished attic, a converted porch, or a whole house during a decade when electricity looked permanently inexpensive. Ductless mini-splits solve exactly that geometry: small refrigerant lines instead of duct chases, a head per zone, no plaster sacrificed. Add rural lots with abundant room to site an outdoor unit properly, and the physical objections that complicate this project in dense neighborhoods mostly evaporate here.
Electric baseboard converts electricity to heat at a coefficient of performance of 1 — one unit of electricity in, one unit of heat out, which is as good as resistance heating can ever be. A cold-climate heat pump moves heat rather than creating it, and runs at a COP near 3 across a typical heating season, meaning roughly three units of heat per unit of electricity. That ratio, not any marketing claim, is the entire case. A typical home switching off electric baseboard saves in the neighborhood of $2,150 a year — treat that as an estimate, because your actual number depends on how much of the house is baseboard-heated, how well it holds heat, your electric rate, and how you live in it. An installer who has seen your last twelve months of usage can produce a figure worth trusting; a website cannot.
The federal 25C energy efficient home improvement credit expired December 31, 2025. A heat pump installed in 2026 does not qualify for it, full stop. This is currently the most common and most expensive misunderstanding in the market, partly because the credit ran for years and partly because a great deal of published material still describes it in the present tense. If a quote, a flyer, or a salesperson folds a federal tax credit into your 2026 project math, that math is wrong. Separately, instant discounts may be available at the distributor level through the New England Heat Pump Accelerator, a federally funded program distinct from NHSaves — worth asking your installer about, with the caveat that a homeowner cannot collect from multiple utility programs for the same equipment.
Call (603) 506-4389 to get connected with a licensed, insured installer covering Amherst — one who will handle pre-verification before the equipment arrives, not after.
Call (603) 506-4389Both were, at different times. The enhanced rebate for replacing electric resistance heat was $1,250 per ton for installations from January 1 through March 22, 2026, then rose to $2,000 per ton for installations from March 23 through December 31, 2026. Pages written or copied before spring never reflected the change, which is why the old figure is still so widespread. As of August 2026 the current figure is $2,000 per ton, and nhsaves.com is where to confirm it before you commit.
You lose the enhanced tier. Pre-verification through NHSaves.com/GetVerified has to be completed before installation, and there is no retroactive path back to it once the equipment is in. On a three-ton system that is a $6,000 mistake as of August 2026. If you are still at the quoting stage, this is the one item to nail down first — ahead of brand, ahead of scheduling, ahead of price.
Often yes, and sometimes no. It cuts both ways in a baseboard house: you are removing an enormous electrical load at the same time you are adding a much smaller one, so total demand usually falls. But older services in Amherst were sized for the appliances of their day, and if a panel or service upgrade turns out to be necessary, it is a real expense that no rebate offsets. Ask for it to be assessed during the quote so the number is in the plan rather than a surprise mid-install.
Not from multiple utility programs on the same equipment. The New England Heat Pump Accelerator is a separate, federally funded effort that can show up as an instant discount at the distributor level rather than a rebate check, and how it interacts with your specific project is a question for the installer and the current program rules. What is settled is that the federal 25C tax credit expired at the end of 2025 and is not part of the picture for a 2026 installation. Verify anything incentive-related at nhsaves.com, since these programs have already shifted once this year.
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