Seattle City Light Clean Heat Rebates: What You Can Still Get in 2026

Seattle homeowners get asked a lot of confusing questions about rebates, usually by people trying to sell them something. So here is the plain version: if Seattle City Light bills your home for electricity, you are inside a real rebate program called Clean Heat, it still exists in 2026, and the money is weighted heavily toward homes getting off oil heat.

What it is not is a flat check that every Seattle address collects. The amount depends on what is being removed, what is being installed, and sometimes on household income. Below is how it actually breaks down, what it means for the price of a ducted heat pump, and the part most quotes skip.

Rebates follow the meter, not the city limits

This is the single most common mistake we see on bids from out-of-area contractors. Rebate eligibility is decided by the utility that bills the home for electricity. Not the county. Not the zip code. Not the mailing address on the envelope.

In Varsity's 45-city service area, Seattle City Light is the utility of record for:

• Seattle — the whole city
• Burien, Normandy Park, Renton, SeaTac and Tukwila — split, block by block, between City Light and another local electric utility

If you are in one of those five split cities, the two utilities run completely separate programs with different dollar amounts and different equipment requirements. A neighbor two streets over can get a materially different answer than you do, and both answers are correct. We read the utility name off your power bill before we quote. It takes five seconds and it prevents a very ugly conversation later.

What Clean Heat still pays in 2026

Converting off oil heat

This is where the real money sits. Seattle still has thousands of oil-heated homes, concentrated in the older housing stock — the craftsman bungalows, the 1920s four-squares, the pre-war homes north of the Ship Canal and across the Central District. City Light's oil conversion incentive has run around $2,000, and income-qualified households have been able to layer additional assistance on top.

If you are burning oil and you are on City Light, you are the best-positioned heat pump customer in the region. You also get the biggest operating-cost change, because oil heat is expensive heat.

Converting off electric resistance

Baseboard heaters, wall heaters, electric furnaces. A heat pump cuts heating energy use roughly 30 to 50 percent compared with electric resistance, which is the most reliable efficiency gain in this entire business. Conversion rebates generally exist for this category, with the amount tied to the efficiency rating of the equipment installed rather than the brand badge on it.

For homes with no ductwork — common in older Seattle construction — the conversion usually means ductless mini-splits rather than a ducted system, and the zone count drives the price more than anything else does.

Income-qualified programs

Separate from the standard rebate, Washington's HEAR program serves households at or below 150 percent of area median income, and City Light has run its own moderate-income adders. These stack differently than the standard rebates and have their own paperwork and verification steps. If your household might be in range, say so at the estimate — it changes the math enough to be worth the extra forms.

What earns little or nothing

Swapping a working, relatively modern heat pump for a new one of similar efficiency. Replacing a gas furnace with another gas furnace. Adding air conditioning only. Utility rebate dollars exist to move homes to cleaner, more efficient heat, so the programs pay for the change in heating source, not for new equipment in general.

The federal credit is gone — plan around it

The federal 25C tax credit, worth up to $2,000 toward a qualifying heat pump, ended December 31, 2025. No installation done in 2026 qualifies. If a salesperson still has it on their worksheet, that worksheet is a year out of date and you should treat the rest of their numbers with the same suspicion.

The upside: there is no year-end deadline pressure anymore. Utility rebates run on their own calendars, so you can install when it suits you rather than racing a tax deadline. More on the full statewide picture in our Washington heat pump rebate guide.

What a Seattle heat pump costs before the rebate

Seattle sits in our affluent market tier — higher labor and permitting costs, tighter access, more older homes with complications behind the drywall. Here is the honest range:

A Clean Heat rebate comes off that, and the oil conversion case takes the biggest bite out of it. Want a real number before anyone comes to the house? The instant estimate tool asks seven questions and gives you Good, Better and Best starting prices in about a minute.

The Seattle-specific complications worth knowing

Old houses, no ducts. A huge share of Seattle's pre-1940 housing never had forced air. Retrofitting duct into finished walls and plaster is invasive and expensive; mini-splits usually win on both cost and disruption.

Tight lots and side yards. Outdoor unit placement in Wallingford, Ballard or Beacon Hill is often a four-foot side yard shared with a neighbor's bedroom window. Placement affects noise more than the brand does, and we plan it at the estimate rather than on install day.

Knob-and-tube and undersized panels. Not every old Seattle home needs a panel upgrade — most 100-amp services handle a heat pump fine — but the ones that don't need to be identified before the quote, not after.

Permits. Seattle issues its own mechanical permit and inspects the work. We pull it on every job. Skipping it can void an insurance claim and complicate a sale, since Washington's seller disclosure asks directly about unpermitted work.

More local detail lives on our Seattle heat pump page.

How we handle the rebate side

Utility programs change their amounts, their equipment minimums and their paperwork regularly, and they pay only through their own contractor networks. So the order of operations matters:

1. We read the electric utility off your bill and confirm which program your address actually falls under.
2. We verify what that program currently pays toward the specific system being installed — before it appears in your quote.
3. We run a Manual J load calculation so the equipment is sized to the house, not to a rule of thumb.
4. We file the rebate paperwork as part of the job and register the manufacturer warranty.

And the honest part: if your current system is young and healthy, or if the rebate math doesn't move the needle for your situation, we'll tell you that too. A heat pump is a good investment in this climate. It isn't a good investment on the wrong year.

Next step

If you're on City Light — or you're in Burien, Renton, SeaTac, Tukwila or Normandy Park and don't know which utility you're on — bring your power bill to the conversation. Book a free in-home estimate at get-estimate or call (253) 785-4622, Monday through Friday, 8 to 6. Washington contractor license VARSIHC766RJ. Ten-year parts and labor warranty on every installation, most finished in a single day.