In this episode, Ben Lagrange, owner of Blue Ridge Heating & Air, explains Duke Energy HVAC rebates available to eligible Brevard homeowners. He covers replace-on-failure, early replacement, conversion and dual-fuel incentives, eligibility and trade ally requirements, the application process, and how some rebates may be combined with manufacturer promotions and financing offers.
John Maher: Welcome to Clearing the Air, the Blue Ridge Heating and Air podcast where we help homeowners in upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina make smarter, more confident decisions about heating, cooling, indoor air quality, and whole home comfort. Today I’m with owner Ben Lagrange, and our topic is Duke Energy HVAC rebates for Brevard North Carolina homeowners. Welcome, Ben.
Ben Lagrange: Thank you, John. Thanks for having me again.
Duke Energy HVAC Rebates Available in Brevard, NC
John: Absolutely. Ben, as of the recording date, which is in mid-October of 2026, which Duke Energy rebates are available to eligible Brevard homeowners for heat pumps, central air systems, mini splits, duct improvements, insulation, smart thermostats, or other energy efficient upgrades?
Ben: Sure, John. Yeah, Duke actually has a lot of rebates, and they’re identical in North Carolina and South Carolina. There’s so many, it’s a little bit overwhelming. So we do help customers work through that, but there’s strong rebates on heat pumps and there’s good rebates, but not quite as strong on air conditioners. And if you put yourself in Duke’s standpoint, they’re trying to satisfy the demand of the grid, so they’re incentivized to get homeowners off the grid or reduce their power consumption from the grid as much as possible.
So a lot of their rebates are kind of based around that premise. So one of the rebates is called replace on failure. So typically that’s the least financially strong rebate. That means the homeowners waited until their systems failed to the point it can’t be repaired or it’s too expensive to repair it or it cannot be repaired because the parts aren’t available and now we’re going to replace it.
So they want to incentivize you to at least get as good of energy efficient equipment as you can at that time. They have stronger rebates if you do an early replacement. So that same system could have been replaced, let’s say a month before it failed or a year before it failed anytime. They want to reward the proactive customer to buy more efficient equipment sooner so they can save the energy that they’re having to push out to your house.
So those rebates are roughly 25% better than the replace on failure rebates. And they vary quite a bit across efficiencies of systems from entry level to 20 SEER systems. They can go from let’s say $500 for replace on failure to $1,000 for early replacement. So it’s twice as valuable.
And then the conversion is another category they have. And in the North Carolina Mountain areas, Brevard where our office is located in particular, there’s a lot of this kind of thing where maybe 40 or 50 years ago when home was built, there was no central air. It was built with baseboard heat or maybe radiant heat and Duke wants to get rid of the electric heat, that electric resistance heat that’s in the house. So they have a conversion rebate. If you take out the baseboard heat and you put in a central heat pump, then you get a pretty nice rebate.
Heat Pump Conversion and Dual-Fuel Rebates
John: But that requires you to actually remove the baseboard heating from the house and completely replace it with the heat pump system.
Ben: That’s right. So that can be close to $2,000 depending on what you get. And then one step even further, if you go to what’s called a hybrid system or dual fuel system where you say, I’m going to be on heat pump heat until I’m below 40 degrees outside and it’s going to switch over to gas furnace heat, that’s considered dual fuel or hybrid. They have an even stronger rebate to get you in that situation. So that way when your furnace kicks in, you’re completely off their grid other than running your blower fan. So the max rebate there I think is about $2,500.
John: Is that because that’s the most energy efficient way to handle heating your home, is with a dual fuel where at the coldest temperatures you’re using gas heat and at the slightly warmer temperatures you’re using the heat pump?
Ben: That’s right. Yeah. When you get into the cold temperatures, for sure gas is the most efficient way. I mean, you’re talking about top of the line being 97, 98% efficient gas furnaces. Even the lowest allowed is 80% efficient and that’s more efficient than that same gas burning in a power plant for Duke. The best they can get is like 60% efficient. So in terms of what’s best for the environment, what’s the best use of the gas, burning it in your gas furnace in your house is the best way to go.
How to Confirm Duke Energy Rebate Eligibility
John: How can homeowners confirm that their property and their Duke Energy account qualifies for these types of rebates? And do the requirements differ depending on, again, like you said, obviously the different equipment that’s being replaced, things are going to change, but how can homeowners help to confirm that their property can qualify for this type of system and this type of rebate?
Ben: Sure. I mean, the best way is if you go to the Duke Energy Smart Saver website, if you just Google Duke Energy Smart Saver, it’ll have you click on Heating and Air and then North Carolina, your region in North Carolina. And so it’ll show you what’s available in your area.
And believe it or not, we have had a customer get confused about this. You do have to be a Duke customer to get the Duke rebate. If a different power company is your [company], you don’t get the Duke rebate, even if you want the Duke rebate or someone puts it on your quote, you can’t get it. But you want to verify with the project manager or the salesperson, comfort specialist that you’re talking to about a new system, about what exactly that system qualifies for because Duke does have pretty stringent requirements.
We talked about the replacement. So they care what you’re replacing and when you’re replacing it, but they also care about what you’re putting in and how efficient that is. And so there’s a few measures of efficiency that get captured in this AHRI rating system, SEER2 and HSPF2. So depending on what those numbers are, we’ll determine how much of a rebate you get. And so on the website, they lay it out pretty clearly, so you can go in there and look and see what opportunity there is. But then when you’re evaluating options to make a purchase, it’d be a good idea to bounce whatever you’re being told off of what you see on that website. Because like I said, there’s a lot of numbers there and it is possible that a person that’s putting something down on your estimate puts the wrong thing down.
Duke Trade Ally and Approved Contractor Requirements
John: Do you have to be having an approved contractor in order to get these types of rebates? And are there any other types of stipulations like that that you have to make sure of in order to make sure that you’re actually going to get the rebate?
Ben: Yeah, John. So the contractor should be registered with Duke as a trade ally. Blue Ridge is a trade ally with them. And that just means they’ve kind of vetted that contractor that they’ve got the right license, they’ve got the right insurance so that you can feel more comfortable about that company coming into your house. I mean, everyone always assumes things will go perfectly, but every now and then you’re glad you’ve got someone that’s got good insurance and knows what they’re doing. And when things do go a little bit sideways, they know how to recover and make it right.
So one thing that Duke does require, so typically the contractor will be the one that applies for the rebate from Duke, but what they have to have, what we have to have when we do that for our customers, we have to have the Duke account number of that customer. And that kind of helps address the situation I talked about a few minutes ago where you have to be a Duke customer.
So for us to enter the rebate on your behalf, we have to put in your Duke account number. So when any of our folks are at a customer’s house and they say they’re a Duke customer, they’ll ask for your account number and that’s why they’re asking.
John: Right. So you get out your last month’s bill and just show that to them and then they can verify that you’re actually a customer.
Ben: That’s right.
How the HVAC Rebate Application Process Works
John: How do homeowners go about applying for the rebate? Do they need invoices, model numbers, certificates, photographs of the system or other records? Or is that the type of thing that you handle for the customer?
Ben: The way Duke’s system works is we handle that for the customer. So they provide us the account number and then after the installation’s done, we’ll submit everything to Duke and then they’ll get their rebate. I don’t know exact timing because I’ve never been on the receiving end of it, but usually within a month.
Stacking Duke Rebates With Manufacturer Incentives
John: And then finally, can Duke Energy incentives be combined with other things like manufacturer rebates or financing offers?
Ben: Sure. Actually right now we sell Carrier as one of our lines. Carrier’s got some rebates that are good through roughly mid-November of 2026 when we’re recording this. And those rebates can be stacked on top of the Duke rebates. It’s a pretty good option. They have their own nuances, higher end systems have larger rebates and that kind of thing.
And then Blue Ridge has our own promotion going right now on our private brand Arctic Flex unit where it’s a $2,000 instant rebate. So that rebate can be stacked on top of anything that Duke has that qualifies as well.
John: So that’s important for the homeowner to check with you and just make sure that, yeah, I’m getting all of the possible rebates and financing offers that are available to me.
Ben: That’s right. And you mentioned earlier a thermostat. Duke has a, I believe it’s $150 rebate now, for a smart thermostat, which means it’s wifi capable. So that’s an attractive feature as well. And that can stack on top of the Carrier rebate we mentioned a minute ago. One of Carrier’s rebates requires that you have their thermostat, their control system, to go with their equipment, but that same thermostat qualifies for the Duke rebate as well.
John: All right, well, that’s all really great information, Ben. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Ben: Terrific. Thank you, John.
John: And for more information, you can visit the Blue Ridge Heating and Air website at bluerridgeheatingair.com or call us in the Greenville, South Carolina area at 864-485-6509 or in the Brevard, North Carolina area. Call 828-415-3339.
