How the free heat pump program in California pays homeowners
A heat pump is a single system that heats and cools a home by moving heat rather than burning fuel to make it. Pacific Gas and Electric, Google and Rewiring America announced a free heat pump program in California on September 3, 2026, giving Santa Clara and Alameda county homeowners a discount on a Carrier heat pump with a battery built in. Rewiring America runs enrollment on its own signup page and pays every eligible household 5,000 dollars off installation. The first 25 households to sign up get double that, a discount of 10,000 dollars, Rewiring America own signup page states. Google is fully funding the program, covering the incentives, the technology and the delivery, though none of the 5 sources for this article states a total dollar amount for that funding.
The first 25 households that enroll get exactly double the standard discount every other eligible household receives. This article calculates the doubling from Rewiring America own 2 published figures.
Show the numbers
| Standard discount | 5,000 |
| First 25 households | 10,000 |
To qualify, a home must be a single family house, a townhome, or a building with 2 to 4 units, owned and occupied for at least 1 year. It cannot already be enrolled in another demand response program, a program that pays a household to change how it uses power at certain times, and it cannot already have rooftop solar panels or a whole home battery installed. It does need a central air conditioning system already in place. Rewiring America own signup page states plainly that savings are not guaranteed and vary by customer behavior, geography and rate plan.
SHARE shows how investing in customers can unlock grid capacity, support growth, and bring real benefits back to communities.
Chelle Izzi, chief commercial officer of Pacific Gas and Electric. Source 1.
How the program turns home devices into one shared power source
The program will enroll nearly 21,000 existing home batteries, smart devices and battery enabled heat pumps across the 2 counties starting fall 2026, running through 2027, Pacific Gas and Electric states. Enrolling a device this way builds what the industry calls a virtual power plant, a network of home equipment a utility can call on together like one large power plant instead of building a new one. Once enrolled, Pacific Gas and Electric and Demand Side Analytics can draw stored power from those batteries and heat pumps when demand on the grid is highest. Google funding the effort fits a pattern Rewiring America has argued publicly, that a technology company paying to unlock power already sitting inside homes is cheaper than building a new natural gas power plant to meet that technology company own rising electricity demand from data centers.
By helping families upgrade their homes with efficient electric technologies, we can lower costs, improve comfort, and optimize California's grid capacity at the same time.
Ari Matusiak, founder and chief executive officer of Rewiring America. Source 1.
Why 12 megawatts is small next to what its partners already run
A gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts, and each megawatt measures how fast electricity moves, not how much a battery stores. The program itself is expected to add about 12 megawatts of new capacity from its heat pump enrollments, Fast Company reports. That is far smaller than what 3 of its 9 partner companies, Tesla, Sunrun and Renew Home, already manage today. Utility Dive independently counts nearly 17,000 megawatts of home battery and smart thermostat capacity these 3 companies run nationwide, 4,700 megawatts of it inside California alone, a conversion this article performed from Utility Dive own gigawatt figures. Renew Home alone runs about 4,000 megawatts of smart thermostat capacity nationally. Pacific Gas and Electric and Demand Side Analytics run the program as a proof of concept that could later expand beyond homes to commercial, industrial and utility scale energy resources.
The 12 megawatt figure is reported by source 5, Fast Company, as new capacity this program itself expects to add from its heat pump enrollments, and is not the same measurement as the other 3 rows. The other 3 rows are Utility Dive gigawatt figures, 4.7 gigawatts in California, about 4 gigawatts of Renew Home thermostats nationally, and nearly 17 gigawatts nationwide across all 3 companies, converted to megawatts by this article to sit on the same axis. None of these 3 rows describe capacity the program itself controls.
Show the numbers
| New capacity this program expects to add | 12 |
| Renew Home thermostats nationwide | 4,000 |
| Existing partner capacity in California | 4,700 |
| Tesla, Sunrun and Renew Home nationwide | 17,000 |