In the fall of 2023, Efficiency Maine announced that it would not be requiring homeowners to disconnect their older heating systems in order to be eligible for whole-home heat pump rebates.
A new program designed to aid mobile home owners with heat pump adoption, however, still requires that existing systems be removed in order to qualify.
In other words, if you want the state rebate, you’ve got to dismantle and remove your natural gas or oil-based heating system.
Efficiency Maine — a quasi-government organization established to “plan and implement energy efficiency programs” throughout the state — offered an explanation for this apparent disconnect in a statement to the Maine Wire.
According to Efficiency Maine, manufactured and mobile home owners must remove existing systems because the type of heat pump offered through this program must be able to utilize closet space that would otherwise by occupied by a furnace, as well as a home’s existing duct work.
In November of last year, Efficiency Maine reversed course on a policy that would have required homeowners to disconnect existing heating systems — or hook them up exclusively to a generator — in order to be eligible for rebates on whole-home heat pump systems.
“There was some concern about whether that seemed too aggressive of a step for getting these two systems to separate from each other so that the heat pump could run, unobstructed and achieve its full potential,” Executive Director Michael Stoddard told the Bangor Daily News at the time.
He went on to clarify that the group is now only recommending that older systems be turned off or that their thermostats be turned down.
This controversy came as Efficiency Maine transitioned the focus of their rebate programs from partial-home systems to whole-home ones.
According to Yale Climate Connections — a project of Yale Center for Environmental Communication at Yale University — most heat pumps are able to run at full capacity at temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Although the systems will still produce heat at lower temperatures, heat pumps may “not necessarily keep it as warm as you may typically like.” In these cases, the group recommends turning to “backup heat sources,” noting that “supplementary heat is important for heat pumps in cold climates.”
In February of this year, it was announced that Maine would be receiving $10 million in federal funding to subsidize the installation of heat pumps in mobile and manufactured homes throughout the state.
This grant came as part of a $336 million initiative from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) — sourced from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — that paid for “17 projects across 20 states and 30 Tribal Nations and communities.”
[RELATED: Maine Pols Tout $10M in Tax Dollars to Subsidize Heat Pumps]
Through this funding, Maine will install approximately 675 heat pumps in manufactured and mobile homes owned by low-income residents living in towns with populations less than 10,000.
The heat pumps that will be offered to these homeowners are specially designed to fit the existing duct work of mobile and manufactured homes, thereby easing the retrofitting process.
While funds from the program will cover much of the estimated $15,000 price tag associated with installing a heat pump of this sort, participating homeowners will be required to pay either $2,000 up front or a total of $2,500 over the course of 50 months.
Despite Efficiency Maine’s decision to roll back the requirement that existing heating systems to be disconnected for whole-home heat pump rebates, this new program maintains such a requirement, mandating that homeowners agree to remove existing systems in order to qualify.
In a statement to the Maine Wire, Efficiency Maine explained that this is the case because “the furnace needs to be removed for the whole-home heat pump system to fit in the existing closet to qualify for the Manufactured (Mobile) Home Initiative.“
“In a mobile home, the water lines run underneath where the ducts are,” they continued. “By having the heat pump run through the existing ductwork, we are able to minimize the risk of pipes freezing.”
Efficiency Maine went on to say, however, that manufactured or mobile home owners may also participate in the whole-home heat pump program instead.
“In the instance of a whole-home heat pump system, we allow homeowners to keep their old system for emergency backup only in extremely cold temperatures,” Efficiency Maine explained.
