Long Island electricity rates are some of the highest in the country. That’s not news to anyone opening a PSEG bill in July. What is news to a lot of Nassau County homeowners is that PSEG Long Island will actually pay you — through two separate programs — just for upgrading to a qualifying smart thermostat. We’re talking up to $215 in year one alone, not counting what you save on your monthly bill afterward. The catch is that most people only find out about one program, or they miss the eligibility window entirely. This guide covers both programs, side by side, so you know exactly what you qualify for before spending a dollar.
What PSEG Long Island Actually Offers for Smart Thermostats
There are two separate PSEG Long Island incentive programs tied to smart thermostats, and they work very differently. The first is the Smart Savers demand response program, which pays you $85 when you enroll a qualifying thermostat and $25 every year you stay enrolled. The second is the ENERGY STAR rebate program, which gives you up to $100–$130 back on the purchase price of a new qualifying smart thermostat.
These are not the same program. They have different eligibility rules, different timelines, and — critically — different paths to getting paid. Understanding the difference is what separates homeowners who collect both from those who miss out entirely.
How the PSEG Long Island Smart Savers Program Works
Smart Savers is a demand response program, which means PSEG Long Island will occasionally ask your thermostat to dial back a few degrees during peak summer demand — and they’ll pay you for agreeing to that. The program runs May 1 through September 30 each year. When PSEG activates a demand event, typically on a hot afternoon when the grid is under strain, your thermostat is adjusted by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Before that happens, your home is pre-cooled by 3 degrees for 30 minutes, so the adjustment is barely noticeable in practice. You’re never locked in. If you want full control back, you can override the adjustment from your thermostat, your phone, or the web app at any time. There’s no penalty for overriding — the only requirement is that you participate in at least 50% of all events during the season to stay eligible for your annual reward.
The $85 enrollment reward is paid by check within about eight weeks of approval. In every year after that, you receive $25 as long as your thermostat stays enrolled and your PSEG account remains in good standing. As of June 2025, more than 40,000 Long Island customers have already enrolled — and the program was activated on June 24, 2025 during a documented heat warning affecting most of Long Island, which gives you a real sense of how often and why it gets used.
To qualify for Smart Savers, your Nest thermostat must control central air conditioning and be connected to Wi-Fi. Window units and ductless mini-splits don’t qualify for this program. The thermostat also has to be on PSEG’s approved product list — which brings up one important detail covered below.
The PSEG Long Island ENERGY STAR Rebate — A Separate Check on the Purchase Price
The ENERGY STAR rebate is completely separate from Smart Savers. It’s a mail-in or online rebate on the cost of buying a new ENERGY STAR-certified smart thermostat, and it’s available to any residential PSEG Long Island customer who purchases a qualifying device. For the 2026 program year, the rebate is up to $100–$130 depending on the thermostat model, and it cannot exceed 50% of what you paid for the device. You’re allowed up to two rebates per calendar year — one for a “Connected” thermostat model and one for a “Learning” model.
The submission deadline is 45 days from the date of purchase. That’s a hard cutoff. Miss it and the rebate is forfeited, no exceptions. Once submitted correctly, payment arrives by check or account credit within 10 weeks.
Here’s the detail that trips people up most often: if you buy your thermostat through the PSEG Long Island Energy Efficiency Marketplace, you’re already getting a discounted price — and that discount replaces the mail-in rebate. You cannot stack both. So if you buy through the Marketplace (where PSEG has offered Nest thermostats at dramatically reduced prices), you get the instant discount but you’re not eligible for the additional mail-in rebate. If you buy at retail — Amazon, Best Buy, a local store — you pay full price but you can submit for the rebate.
The good news is that the ENERGY STAR rebate and the Smart Savers enrollment reward are from two separate programs, so you can collect both if you buy at retail, enroll in Smart Savers, and meet both sets of requirements. That’s where the $215 figure in year one comes from: up to $130 on the purchase price plus the $85 Smart Savers enrollment reward.
What Disqualifies You — and What Nassau County Homeowners Need to Know Before Buying
Eligibility sounds straightforward until you run into the details that don’t make it into the headline. A few of these are specific to where you live and what’s already in your home — and Nassau County has some quirks worth knowing about.
The most time-sensitive issue right now is thermostat generation. Google Nest Learning Thermostat 1st and 2nd generation models lost their Smart Savers eligibility after October 2025. If you have one of these older models and you assumed you were still collecting the annual $25 Smart Savers reward, you may want to verify your enrollment status. Upgrading to a current-generation qualifying model is the only way to re-enroll.
Does Your Nassau County Home Have the Wiring for a Nest Thermostat?
This is the practical question that stops a lot of Nassau County homeowners in their tracks — and it’s a legitimate one. Most smart thermostats, including the Nest lineup, require what’s called a C-wire, or common wire, to maintain continuous power. Without it, the thermostat either won’t function reliably or will drain batteries faster than expected, which can cause the Wi-Fi connection to drop and the smart features to stop working.
The problem is that a large portion of Nassau County’s housing stock was built in the post-WWII era — the late 1940s through the 1970s. Levittown, Valley Stream, Hempstead, Elmont, Lynbrook — these communities are full of homes that were wired long before smart thermostats existed. Many of them don’t have a C-wire in the thermostat cable, which means a straight swap from an old thermostat to a Nest isn’t always plug-and-play.
There are workarounds — adapter kits, for instance — but whether they’re appropriate depends on your specific system. A gas furnace, an oil boiler, a heat pump, and a central air handler all have different wiring configurations, and what works for one might not work for another. This is one of the main reasons DIY smart thermostat installation fails: the homeowner buys the device, opens the wall panel, sees a tangle of unfamiliar wires, and either guesses wrong or gives up and leaves the old thermostat in place.
We check your existing wiring, confirm compatibility with your HVAC system, and tell you exactly what’s needed before you spend money on a device that might not work without additional work. It’s a straightforward step that saves a lot of frustration — and it ensures your thermostat will actually qualify for the PSEG programs once installed.
Will PSEG Actually Control Your Thermostat — and Should You Be Worried About It?
This is the question we hear most often from Nassau County homeowners who are interested in Smart Savers but haven’t pulled the trigger. The short answer is: yes, PSEG can make adjustments during demand events, but the reality is much less dramatic than it sounds.
During a Smart Savers event, your thermostat is adjusted by a maximum of 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Before that happens, your home is pre-cooled by 3 degrees — so the net change you’d actually feel is 1 degree in most cases, for a limited window of time. PSEG activates these events during peak demand periods, typically hot summer afternoons, when the grid is under the most stress. The June 24, 2025 activation during a Long Island heat warning is a good example of the kind of conditions that trigger it.
You can override the adjustment at any time. From your Nest app, from the thermostat itself, or from the web portal — there’s no penalty, no fine, and no loss of the annual reward for a single override. The only rule is that you participate in at least 50% of all events during the season. If you override every single event, you won’t qualify for the $25 annual reward, but that’s the only consequence.
For most homeowners, the adjustment is barely noticeable — especially with the pre-cooling buffer. If you’re home during a heat event and you find the adjustment uncomfortable, you override it. That’s the whole system. The $85 enrollment reward and the $25 annual payment are essentially PSEG’s way of thanking you for making the grid more manageable on the hardest days of the summer, and for the vast majority of enrolled customers, the tradeoff is an easy one.
Beyond the Smart Savers program, a smart thermostat earns its keep on the other 350-plus days of the year. Nest’s own research shows the Learning Thermostat saves users an average of $131–$145 per year on heating and cooling — 10–12% on heating and 15% on cooling. For Nassau County homeowners already paying above-average electricity rates, those percentages translate to real dollars, not rounding errors.
Ready to Claim Your PSEG Long Island Thermostat Rebate? Here’s Your Next Step
The money is real, the programs are active, and the eligibility rules are specific enough that getting the details right matters. If you have a qualifying thermostat and central air conditioning, you could walk away with up to $85 from Smart Savers enrollment, up to $130 back on your purchase, and $131–$145 in annual savings on your energy bill — all from a single upgrade.
The part that trips most people up isn’t the rebate itself. It’s the compatibility check, the wiring question, the submission deadline, and knowing which generation of Nest actually qualifies right now. Getting those details right before you buy is what separates homeowners who collect both programs from those who find out after the fact that they missed the window.
If you’re a Nassau County homeowner and you want to know whether your home is wired for a Nest, whether your current thermostat still qualifies for Smart Savers, or what the fastest path to both rebates looks like — we’re based right here in Lynbrook and handle this kind of assessment and installation every day. Give us a call and we’ll walk you through it.
