Heat Pump Grants in Northern Ireland (2026): What You Can Get Now and What Is Promised for 2027

I’m Connor, I run Compare Solar NI, and on 23 September 2026 I checked every heat pump funding claim on this page against the source: the Utility Regulator’s NISEP scheme list for 2026/27, the scheme managers’ own pages, the Department for the Economy and the BBC. Most pages ranking for this search still describe schemes that have closed, or quote GB grants that never applied here.

Here is where things stand.

Route	Who can get it	What it pays	Status, 23 September 2026
Green Heat NI (NISEP, Refresh NI)	Owner-occupiers, income under £28,000 single or £35,000 couple	Air source heat pump plus insulation, fully funded	Full, waiting list open
Toasty Homes Heat Pump and Solar Technologies (NISEP, McGaffin Mechanical)	Same income limits	Heating (including heat pumps), insulation and solar PV, fully funded	McGaffin says funding fully allocated
NISEP business scheme (Power NI)	NI businesses	20% towards heat pumps and other heating technology	Open for 2026/27
0% VAT	Every household	20% off the installed price	Until 31 March 2027
Department for the Economy heat grant	Planned: everyone	Not set	Likely 2027, needs legislation first
Warm Healthy Homes Fund (Department for Communities)	Proposed: lower-income households	Proposed limit £35,000, can include a heat pump	From April 2027, rules not final

If your income is above the NISEP limits, there is no heat pump grant for you in Northern Ireland today.

The two NISEP heat pump schemes

NISEP is the Northern Ireland Sustainable Energy Programme. It is paid for by a levy on every electricity bill, administered by the Energy Saving Trust for the Utility Regulator, and delivered by scheme managers who each hold a slice of the budget. The 2026/27 year runs from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, or until the money runs out.

Two schemes in the 2026/27 list put heat pumps into homes:

Green Heat NI, managed by Refresh NI. Fully funded air source heat pump with heating controls, plus cavity wall and loft insulation where needed. Register interest at [email protected].

Toasty Homes Heat Pump and Solar Technologies, managed by McGaffin Mechanical. Fully funded heating (including heat pumps), insulation and, where suitable, solar panels. Contact McGaffin on 028 9099 6747 or [email protected].

The rules are the same for both:

• You own and live in the home. Private and Housing Executive tenants do not qualify.
• Household income under £28,000 for a single person, or under £35,000 for a couple, joint or single-parent household.
• Your current heating is one of: no central heating, solid fuel, an oil or LPG system with a boiler over 15 years old or broken beyond repair, or Economy 7 heaters installed before 2018.
• No grant for the same measure at the same address in the last 15 years, including through Affordable Warmth.
• Self-builds and new builds are excluded.

The catch is capacity. When I checked on 23 September 2026, Refresh NI listed Green Heat NI as full, with a waiting list for places that come back. McGaffin Mechanical’s grants page said it had fully allocated its NISEP funding. Get your name down anyway: places reappear when applications fall through, and a new NISEP year starts in April.

Businesses: 20% through Power NI

Power NI runs NISEP’s commercial scheme. It pays 20% of the installed cost of heating technology including heat pumps, intelligent controls, boiler replacement and solar thermal, and on 23 September 2026 its page said it was open for 2026/27 applications. It falls under de minimis aid rules, and you must have the grant offer before you order anything. Our commercial solar grants guide covers the same scheme for panels.

What Stormont has actually promised for 2027

This is the part most sites get wrong, so here are the primary sources.

On 26 January 2026 Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald published the Department for the Economy’s response to its consultation on Support for Low Carbon Heating in Residential Buildings (consultation run from 8 October 2024 to 10 January 2025, 107 responses). The release says the next steps are “consulting on financial options and developing a high-level scheme design” during 2026, “and then next year legislating, prior to launch”. The response document itself says the scheme needs new regulations and “it is likely that the new support scheme will be launched in 2027”.

On 17 February 2026 BBC News NI (John Campbell) reported it under the headline “Green heating grants ‘available next year’ in NI”, quoting the department as “minded to provide a one-off capital grant with potential for differing amounts for eligible technologies”, and that a future scheme “is not intended to target or prioritise any particular groups of people or residential properties”. In other words, the plan is a grant for everyone, not another means-tested scheme.

What that does not tell you:

• The amount. Nothing has been set. Sites quoting “£5,000 to £7,500” for NI are guessing.
• The date. “Likely” 2027, after a consultation that had not appeared on the department’s consultations page by 23 September 2026, and after regulations pass through the Assembly.
• Hybrids. The department’s policy is “heat pump led” (more on that below).

The second thing coming is separate and means tested: the Department for Communities’ Warm Healthy Homes Fund, due from April 2027 to replace Affordable Warmth. I read its consultation document (published May 2026, closed 19 August 2026). It proposes a grant limit of £35,000 per home (£45,000 for hard-to-treat homes), covering insulation first and then air source heat pumps, solar panels and battery storage where the home assessment supports them, with an income threshold set at the National Living Wage (£29,741.40 net when the document was written) and £150 million over the first five years. Those are proposals, not final rules. If they survive, this is the scheme that brings funded heat pumps to lower-income NI homes at scale.

“Gas hybrid heat pump allowance”: what that search is really about

This page gets clicks for “gas hybrid heat pump allowance northern ireland”, so here is the straight answer: there is no such allowance in Northern Ireland.

A hybrid system pairs a heat pump with a gas or oil boiler that takes over on the coldest days. In its 2024 consultation the Department for the Economy said it did not intend to give financial support for hybrid heat pumps and asked whether there should be exceptions. Respondents split (41 against, 44 for an exception). The January 2026 response kept the line: policy “will continue to be heat pump led”, and the department will keep “analysing data from trials” of hybrids. So a hybrid is unlikely to qualify for the 2027 grant either, unless that changes in the scheme design consultation.

The allowance people usually have in mind is Phoenix Energy’s Boiler Replacement Allowance: £600 cashback, delivered with Action Renewables, for switching from oil to natural gas, plus a free gas connection. That is a gas conversion offer. Check the current terms and closing date at phoenixenergyni.com/bra before you rely on it.

What a heat pump costs in NI, and what it saves over oil

MCS puts the average air source heat pump at about £13,300 installed in 2025 (MCS Data Dashboard). That is a UK figure, but in Northern Ireland it is close to the whole price for most people, because there is no general grant to subtract. The 0% VAT is already in it.

The running-cost comparison is where Northern Ireland differs from every GB guide, because 61% of homes here heat with oil (NISRA 2024/25), not gas, and oil prices swing hard. My working, for a house burning 1,700 litres of oil a year (swap in your own number from your receipts):

• Kerosene holds about 10.35 kWh per litre. A decent oil boiler at 85% delivers about 8.8 kWh of heat per litre, so 1,700 litres is roughly 15,000 kWh of heat.
• A heat pump with a seasonal efficiency (SCOP) of 3 needs about 5,000 kWh of electricity to deliver the same heat. At 3.5, about 4,300 kWh.
• Electricity: Power NI 32.10p per kWh (monthly direct debit, online billing) to 34.15p (standard), including VAT, from 1 July 2026.

Annual heating cost for 15,000 kWh of heat	Cost
Oil at 17 Sep 2026 price (£1,007.16 per 900 litres)	£1,902
Oil at 13 Aug 2026 price (£778.15 per 900 litres)	£1,470
Heat pump, SCOP 3, at 32.10p	£1,601
Heat pump, SCOP 3, at 34.15p	£1,703
Heat pump, SCOP 3.5, at 32.10p	£1,372

Oil prices are the Consumer Council’s weekly NI averages. At September’s price a heat pump saves £200 to £530 a year. At August’s, a SCOP 3 heat pump costs more to run than the boiler. On £13,300 up front, the fuel saving alone does not pay a heat pump back in any sensible time while oil sits near £1 a litre. That is why the size of the 2027 grant matters so much here, and why I would not rip out a working oil boiler for a heat pump on price grounds today. If your boiler is dead, or you are on old Economy 7 heaters or solid fuel, the sums are different and the NISEP schemes above were built for you.

Solar and a heat pump: what my tracker shows

I run the /solar-today/ tracker, which logs daily generation for 4kW and 6kW systems in seven NI towns. Its monthly averages for a 4kW system:

Month (2026)	Average kWh per day, 4kW
February	3.06
March	6.49
May	13.03
July	14.74
September (1 to 22)	6.57

A heat pump does most of its work from November to March. Take the 1,700-litre house above: even if February accounted for only a tenth of its heating, the heat pump would need about 18 kWh of electricity a day. The panels gave 3.06. Solar will not run your heating in an NI winter, and anyone who tells you “free heating from your roof” has not looked at a February.

Where they do line up is hot water from April to September. A July average of 14.74 kWh a day is far more than a heat pump needs to heat a cylinder, and the surplus that would otherwise export at Power NI’s 11.88p (the rate from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2027, reset each October) is worth 32p a unit used at home instead. Of the 394 quote requests that came through this site between March and September 2026, 37 ticked heat pump as an interest alongside solar. For that group, solar first makes sense: it costs less, it earns from day one with the heating you already have, and a 4kW system in Belfast has generated 2,389 kWh so far this year on my tracker. If that is where you are, you can compare solar quotes here. The fuller comparison is in solar panels vs heat pumps, and if you are staying on oil, solar in an oil-heated home runs those numbers.

Not available in Northern Ireland

• Boiler Upgrade Scheme (£7,500): England and Wales only.
• Warm Homes Plan: Great Britain only. Energy efficiency is devolved.
• ECO4: GB only.
• Domestic RHI: NI’s scheme closed to new applicants on 29 February 2016.
• Affordable Warmth: open, but it funds insulation, oil or gas central heating and windows, not heat pumps.

What I would do in your position

1. Income under £28,000 or £35,000, old or broken heating: email [email protected] for the Green Heat NI waiting list, and ring NI Energy Advice on 0800 111 4455, who can also check Affordable Warmth.
2. Working oil boiler, income above the limits: insulate, keep the boiler, and watch for the Department for the Economy’s scheme design consultation. The grant amount will decide whether a heat pump pays here.
3. Boiler failed this winter: get quotes for both a replacement boiler and a heat pump. A 0% VAT heat pump at around £13,300 against a new oil boiler is a real decision. Waiting for a scheme with no launch date is not a plan.

For every other scheme, including the winter bill support, see the full list of home energy grants in NI. For solar funding specifically, see solar panel grants in NI.