The Quick Answer
Start with the thing most guides to Michigan plumbing rebates in 2026 still get wrong: the federal energy efficiency tax credits ended on 31 December 2025. Equipment installed in 2026 does not qualify for the 25C credit that homeowners claimed on water heaters in previous years. What is still available in Michigan is a state program and a set of utility and municipal ones. MiHER, Michigan’s federally funded energy rebate program, is income-qualified and covers a large share of a heat pump water heater. Instant water heater rebates from Consumers Energy, applied by a participating contractor at the point of purchase. Grand Rapids’ lead service line replacement program, which covers the public side at no cost. Michigan Saves financing, including a septic replacement loan. This guide covers each one, who qualifies, and how to claim it.
Rebate articles age badly, and this subject changed substantially at the end of 2025. If you read a guide written before then, it will tell you about a 30% federal credit on water heaters. That credit is gone for 2026 installations. Everything below reflects the programs as they stand, with links to the source pages so you can verify current amounts.
First, the Correction: the Federal Tax Credit Ended in 2025
The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit — the one commonly cited as “30% up to $600 on a water heater,” and known to accountants as the 25C credit — was available for qualifying property placed in service through 31 December 2025. The IRS’s own page for the credit states that it applies to property placed in service before that date. ENERGY STAR’s federal tax credit page says the same, and notes the Residential Clean Energy credit is also ending on 31 December 2025.
🔴 What this means in practice. If you installed qualifying equipment during 2025, you claim it on the return covering that tax year — that is still valid and worth doing. If you are installing in 2026, do not build the credit into your budget. Anyone quoting you a job and telling you a third of it comes back at tax time is working from stale information.
Tax law changes, and a future Congress could restore something similar. But you cannot plan a 2026 purchase around a credit that does not currently exist, and you should treat any contractor who tells you otherwise with some caution. Confirm your own position with a tax professional rather than with a plumber — including this one.
Program 1: MiHER — Michigan Home Energy Rebates
This is the significant one for Michigan homeowners in 2026, and it is the program most people have not heard of.
MiHER is Michigan’s home energy rebate program, administered by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) using federal Inflation Reduction Act funding. It rolled out in 2025 and it is running now. It consists of two programs:
| Program | What it covers |
| HOMES / Home Efficiency Rebates | Whole-home efficiency work — insulation, air sealing, heating and cooling — with the rebate scaled to the modelled energy saving rather than to a fixed product list |
| HEAR / Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates | High-efficiency electric equipment, explicitly including heat pump water heaters, along with heat pumps, electric panel upgrades and wiring. Restricted to households at or below 150% of Area Median Income |
💵 What matters for plumbing. A heat pump water heater sits squarely inside the HEAR program. For qualifying lower-income households, a substantial share — in some cases up to the full project cost, subject to the per-measure cap — can be covered. Households between 80% and 150% of AMI receive a smaller share. Because the amounts depend on your income band, your specific equipment and the assessment, EGLE does not publish a single headline number, and neither will we: get yours from the program directly.
How the process actually works.
MiHER is not a form you fill in after the fact. The sequence is:
- Check eligibility against Area Median Income for your household size and county.
- Submit a MiHER application. Applications are being taken from low-to-moderate-income residents; there have been temporary pauses in specific districts while pending applications are worked through, so check current status.
- Choose a registered MiHER contractor from EGLE’s approved network. This is the step that catches people out — the work has to be done by a registered contractor for the rebate to apply. A plumber who is not in the network cannot make the job eligible retroactively.
- Have a home assessment to identify eligible upgrades.
- Have the work done, and the rebate is paid to the contractor, so eligible households are not fronting the money.
Full details, the eligibility calculator and the contractor locator are on EGLE’s Home Energy Rebates (MiHER) page. The MiHER call centre is 855-510-7080.
🟠 Be straight with yourself about this one. If a heat pump water heater is the upgrade you want and you are income-eligible, MiHER is far and away the largest amount of money available to you in 2026, and it is worth choosing your contractor around the program rather than the other way round. Ask any plumber you are considering — including us — whether they are MiHER-registered before you book the work.
Program 2: Consumers Energy Water Heater Rebates
Consumers Energy serves most of West Michigan, and it runs rebates on water heating equipment for its residential customers. Three categories are listed on its water heating rebates page:
| Equipment | Stated requirement |
| High-efficiency gas water heater | Natural gas customers; must be ENERGY STAR certified |
| Gas tankless water heater | Natural gas customers; must be ENERGY STAR certified |
| Heat pump water heater | Electric customers; UEF above 2.2, maximum 55-gallon capacity |
How you get it — and why you will not find a form. Consumers Energy delivers these as instant rebates through participating contractors: the contractor buys the qualifying unit at a discounted price and passes the saving through on your invoice. There is no mail-in claim and no waiting period, which is genuinely better — but it does mean the discount only exists if your installer is in the program. Consumers Energy does not publish the dollar amounts on the page, so ask for the current figure in writing as part of your quote rather than working from a number you read somewhere.
If you are weighing tankless against a tank replacement, the rebate is one input among several and rarely the deciding one. Our tankless water heater guide for Grand Rapids covers the real cost comparison, and water heater efficiency in Michigan covers what you can save on the unit you already own without buying anything at all.
Program 3: DTE Energy — Check Before You Assume
DTE serves parts of Michigan but most of the Grand Rapids and West Michigan market is Consumers Energy territory. Service areas do overlap in places, and gas and electric service can come from different utilities at the same address, so the practical advice is simple: look at your most recent bills, confirm which utility supplies your gas and which supplies your electricity, and check that utility’s current residential rebate list. Do not assume the program you read about applies to your address.
Program 4: Lead Service Line Replacement in Grand Rapids
Not a rebate exactly, but the largest sum of money most Grand Rapids homeowners can access for a plumbing purpose in 2026.
🔵 What the city does. The City of Grand Rapids replaces the public side of a lead service line at no cost to the property owner, and covers the full replacement at no cost when the line is replaced as part of a city construction project or because of a leak on the service line. Where a line is not yet scheduled, the owner is responsible for the private side — and the city offers a Ten-Pay program spreading that cost over ten years at a low interest rate.
How to find out whether this applies to you. Search your address on the city’s lead water service line map. The city’s records are a strong indication but not a guarantee without visual inspection. Property owners are contacted six to twelve months ahead of a scheduled replacement. Questions go to 311 or (616) 456-3000, or leadfreewater@grcity.us.
One clarification worth making, because it comes up constantly: a service line is the pipe from the street main to your house. It is not the same as the supply piping inside your home. If your concern is old galvanised pipe throughout the house rather than lead in the service line, that is a repiping question, and no rebate program covers it.
Program 5: Michigan Saves Financing
Michigan Saves is a nonprofit clean energy financing organisation that arranges low-interest loans for home energy improvements through a network of authorised contractors. Two of its programs touch plumbing directly:
- Home energy improvement loans, which cover efficiency work including qualifying water heating equipment.
- A septic replacement loan program — low-interest financing for septic system replacement, which is relevant across a lot of rural Kent and Ottawa county property and is not covered by any rebate.
- Lead abatement incentives for removing lead from homes.
Financing is not free money, and a low-interest loan on equipment you did not need is not a saving. But for a household facing an unavoidable septic replacement or a failed water heater with no cash on hand, it is a far better instrument than a credit card. As with MiHER, the work has to go through an authorised contractor — check michigansaves.org before you book.
Michigan Plumbing Upgrades With No Rebate in 2026
Worth saying plainly, because it saves people time:
- Water softeners. Not classified as energy efficiency equipment by the utility programs or MiHER. Occasionally a municipality runs a water-efficiency incentive on fixtures, but softeners are not covered. Our water softener installation guide covers the actual costs, and the water softener service page covers what we do.
- Standard gas storage water heaters that do not carry ENERGY STAR certification.
- Repiping, drain work, fixture replacement and general repair. No program covers a plumbing repair.
- Toilets and fixtures — there is no active statewide Michigan rebate for WaterSense fixtures, though individual municipalities occasionally run one. Worth a call to your own water utility if you are replacing several.
How to Stack What Is Left
With the federal credit gone, stacking in 2026 mostly means combining a state rebate with a utility rebate, and the honest answer is that it depends on program rules that change. The practical sequence:
- Check MiHER eligibility first, because it is the largest amount and because it dictates which contractor you use.
- Then check your utility’s current rebate for the specific unit you are considering — and ask whether it can be combined with MiHER on the same equipment, since some programs restrict this.
- Get the rebate amount in writing in your quote, not verbally.
- Keep the invoice, the model number and the installation date. Even where no claim form exists, you will want them.
A caution about timing. Programs funded from a fixed federal allocation run until the allocation is spent. MiHER has already paused new applications in specific districts to work through the queue. If a program applies to you and the upgrade is one you were going to make anyway, there is a real argument for not waiting until next year.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit applied to qualifying property placed in service through 31 December 2025. A water heater installed in 2026 does not qualify. If you installed qualifying equipment during 2025 you can still claim it on the return for that tax year — speak to a tax professional about your own situation.
Yes. MiHER work has to be carried out by a contractor registered in EGLE’s MiHER network, and the rebate is paid to that contractor. This is the most common reason a homeowner finds out too late that their installation did not qualify. Confirm registration before you book, not after.
The city replaces the public side at no cost to the owner, and covers the whole replacement when it happens as part of a city project or because of a leak on the line. Otherwise the private side is the owner’s responsibility, with a ten-year payment plan available. Check your address on the city’s lead service line map first.
