With the chal­leng­ing econ­omy, my fam­ily and I have been tak­ing a hard look at finan­cial plan­ning and our future. To this end, when I recently sched­uled rou­tine main­te­nance of our HVAC sys­tem, I requested an esti­mate for a new heat pump.  Our equip­ment has not shown any signs of break­ing down, but it is 15–20 years old, and I wanted to be cer­tain that we were pre­pared in terms of emer­gency funds were it to go on the fritz.

At the first men­tion of an esti­mate, the sched­uler on the phone started rant­ing and rav­ing about rebates and tax cred­its. While I am in the envi­ron­men­tal field, and was aware that there were incen­tives out there, I was not aware of the sig­nif­i­cance of these oppor­tu­ni­ties. And thus this blog is writ­ten in the hope that some­one else may ben­e­fit (finan­cially and envi­ron­men­tally) by replac­ing their sys­tem by the end of this cal­en­dar year, when the Fed­eral tax credit is due to expire.

Essen­tially, the pro­posal for the new 2 ton heat pump is $5,400; but with the cur­rent pro­grams in place, our final cost will be $2,800.

The first rebate which comes right off the top is from the man­u­fac­turer.  Ours was $200, and many of the brands have man­u­fac­turer rebates.

Next, a rebate check from BGE will fol­low, for $400:

http://www.bgesmartenergy.com/residential/heating-cooling/equipment

Then there is the poten­tial $500 rebate from the Mary­land Energy Admin­is­tra­tion (depend­ing on avail­able funding):

http://www.energy.state.md.us/Residential/applianceRebate.html

Lastly, there is the more highly pub­li­cized Fed­eral tax credit of $1,500:

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=tax_credits.tx_index

Our HVAC con­trac­tor offers six months same-as-cash so we intend to pay for the heat pump when our tax refund comes in.

With this pur­chase, our fam­ily should have its heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tem worry-free for the next 10 years. We also expect that in the next few years we will earn back the remain­ing $2,800 cost on lower monthly energy bills because the new unit is much more energy effi­cient than the old one.  (And say hello, smaller car­bon foot­print.)  This project was easy to do and we’re so glad we’re tak­ing care of it now, with all of these help­ful incen­tives, and before win­ter hits.

~Laura Miller, OES