The AES Indiana Lighting Rebate: How Indianapolis Warehouses Get LED Retrofits Mostly Paid For

Mostly paid for is a fair description, with the arithmetic shown. In 2026 AES Indiana pays a prescriptive rebate of $93.75 to $300 per LED high bay depending on its lumen output, capped at 50 percent of the material and external labor cost, and it pays on the invoice with no pre approval. On a typical 400 watt metal halide swap the rebate covers a large share of the fixture, and the energy saving, about 310 watts per fixture, pays the rest within the first few years of running. If the building is in Plainfield, Whitestown, Carmel or Greenwood, the utility is Duke Energy and the numbers change. All of it is below, from the application forms themselves.

What the 2026 AES Indiana rebate actually pays

The program is the 2026 AES Indiana Business Rebates and Incentives Program, run for AES by CLEAResult, and the prescriptive lighting application is a per fixture price list.¹ For interior high bay and low bay LED fixtures the 2026 rates are $50 for a low bay under 10,000 lumens, $93.75 for a high bay at 10,001 to 15,000 lumens, $150 at 15,001 to 30,000 lumens, $218.75 at 30,001 to 50,000 lumens and $300 above 50,000 lumens.¹ Retrofit kits and screw in mogul base lamps that stay in the existing housing pay $50 to $300 on the same lumen ladder, a little less per tier than a new fixture.¹

Exterior and parking lot fixtures pay $62.50 to $312.50 per fixture by lumen tier.¹ Controls are paid per watt controlled: $0.13 for an interior occupancy sensor, $0.19 for daylighting or a combined sensor, and $0.56 per watt, or $0.13 per square foot, for a networked lighting control system on the DLC controls list.¹ Linear fixtures, troffers and T8 replacement lamps have their own rows, from $3.12 a lamp to $56.25 a fixture.¹

So on the fixture in the ledger the utility hands back $150 and the meter hands back somewhere between $112 and $175 every year it runs. That is the sense in which the retrofit is mostly paid for. The rebate on its own is capped at half the material and labor; the rebate plus the first 2 or 3 years of savings is the whole invoice.

The rules that disqualify a project

Most rejected applications fail on paperwork, not on the lighting. The 2026 application is explicit. Installed equipment must have a current ENERGY STAR certification or be listed on the DesignLights Consortium Solid State Lighting Qualified Products List, and rebranded copies of listed models are not eligible.¹ High bay fixtures must be listed as a high bay or low bay luminaire on that list, not just listed.¹ The model number on the invoice has to match the specification sheet.¹

• One for one, and no wattage creep. Replacements are one for one unless a section says otherwise, and the new fixture wattage cannot exceed the existing fixture wattage.¹
• LED to LED is not eligible. The first conversion is the one that pays; swapping a first generation LED for a better one is not a rebate job.¹
• 1,800 hours a year minimum. Every fixture must run at least that long, which a single shift warehouse clears and a seasonal building may not.¹
• The old fixtures leave the building. Replaced equipment must be removed from service and properly disposed of or recycled.¹
• Light levels still have to be right. Post installation light levels are expected to meet current IESNA recommendations and comply with electrical, safety and energy codes, which is a design question, not a catalog question.¹
• The account matters. The applicant must be an active AES Indiana business customer on a qualifying rate code at the time of installation.¹

Timing is the other trap. Prescriptive rebates need no pre approval; you install, then apply within 90 calendar days, and for the 2026 program everything must be installed and operational by December 31, 2026.¹ Rebates are capped at 50 percent of the total material and external labor cost, at $250,000 per project, and at $1,000,000 per customer per calendar year combined with custom incentives.¹ Funds are limited and first come, first served, and payment generally arrives 6 to 8 weeks after complete paperwork.¹

Prescriptive or custom: which application

Prescriptive is the price list above: one for one swaps, apply after the fact. Custom is for everything the list does not cover, and AES names lighting projects that include a redesign, which means anything that is not a one for one replacement, along with new construction that is modeled against energy code.⁴ Custom pays $0.07 to $0.10 per kilowatt hour of first year savings, capped at 50 percent of material and external labor and at $1,000,000 per project.³

The difference that matters is sequence. For custom you may not purchase or install equipment until receiving pre approval from AES Indiana in the form of a Letter of Intent, and the form asks you to confirm you have not signed a purchase order, ordered equipment or started construction.³ Measures must have at least a 5 year life and a payback of at least 1 year before incentives.³ If a warehouse wants fewer, brighter fixtures on a new layout, that is a redesign, so we file the custom pre application first and wait for the letter before anything is ordered. Get that order wrong and the incentive is gone.

In Plainfield, Whitestown and the north suburbs it is Duke Energy

AES Indiana’s service area, filed with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, lists Indianapolis, Speedway, Beech Grove, Lawrence, Southport, Mooresville and a handful of other communities, with parts of the surrounding counties.⁶ The IURC’s own service territory map, queried point by point, returns Indianapolis Power and Light, which is AES, for downtown, the airport side industrial area, Speedway and Beech Grove, and Duke Energy for Plainfield, Whitestown, Carmel, Fishers, Greenwood, Brownsburg, Noblesville and Franklin.⁷ Lebanon runs its own municipal utility.⁷ Boundaries and town limits do not line up exactly, so the bill header is the final word.

Duke Energy Indiana’s Smart $aver lighting application, effective August 21, 2026, pays per fixture by the wattage of the fixture it replaces: $165 for an LED replacing a 251 to 400 watt HID fixture, or $250 if the fixture carries luminaire level lighting controls; $330 and $500 above 400 watts.⁸ A mogul base LED lamp replacing a 251 to 400 watt HID lamp pays $132; a high bay retrofit kit for the same fixture pays $149.^8,9 Interior occupancy sensors pay $0.10 per watt controlled and networked lighting controls $0.25 per watt, with pre approval required for every networked system.⁸ Exterior fixtures replacing 251 to 400 watt HID pay $75, and $200 above 400 watts.⁹

Three Duke rules differ from AES. The cap is 75 percent of the customer’s incremental equipment cost and installation costs cannot be included, so the labor side of the invoice is not rebated at all.⁸ The product must be on the DLC list at the time of purchase and within 90 days of the application, and Duke says plainly that the DLC logo on a specification sheet does not guarantee approval.⁸ And Duke’s published amounts are maximums; the rebate issued may be less depending on the cost of the equipment.⁹ Duke also offers an optional pre qualification that confirms account and equipment eligibility for 90 days, which we use on every Duke job because rebate levels are scheduled to change and the pre qualification locks the level.¹⁰ For custom projects Duke’s lighting rate is $0.075 per kilowatt hour plus $170 per summer peak kilowatt, on a rate sheet dated 2021 that is still the document Duke links, with an express option that skips pre approval for lighting projects under 700,000 kilowatt hours of savings.^11,12

Why lighting is the biggest lever in a warehouse

The federal building energy survey puts a number on it. In warehouse and storage buildings, lighting used 23 of the 95 billion kilowatt hours consumed, about 24 percent, against 17 percent across all commercial buildings, and it is the largest identified end use in the warehouse row, ahead of cooling at 15 and refrigeration at 10.²⁰ Offices spend their electricity on computers and cooling. Warehouses spend it on light, because the ceilings are high, the floor is large and the lamps run whenever anyone is inside.

That is also why the rebate programs put their biggest per fixture numbers on high bays. A DLC listed fixture is required to hold 70 percent of its output for at least 50,000 hours under the version 6.0 rules, and the better fixtures are rated to 100,000 hours, which at 4,000 hours a year is 25 years without a lamp change.^13,17 A 400 watt metal halide, by comparison, dims as it ages and is usually relamped on a lift. The maintenance saving is not in the rebate, but it is in the owner’s budget. Our warehouse high bay page covers the fixtures and the mounting; the controls page covers the sensors that earn the per watt rebates on top.

The tax side, honestly

Two federal items get mentioned in every rebate conversation, and one of them has changed. The Section 179D energy efficient commercial buildings deduction, which covered interior lighting systems at $0.58 to $1.16 per square foot in 2025, and roughly 5 times that where prevailing wage and apprenticeship rules were met, was given a termination date by the July 2025 tax law: the section shall not apply with respect to property the construction of which begins after June 30, 2026.^21,22,23 A retrofit that began construction on or before that date can still claim it. One that starts now cannot, and any contractor still selling the retrofit on 179D is working from an old slide.

Bonus depreciation went the other way. Treasury and the IRS issued guidance in January 2026 on the permanent 100 percent additional first year depreciation deduction for qualified property acquired after January 19, 2025.²⁴ Whether a given lighting retrofit is qualified property is a question for your CPA, not for an electrician, so we put the invoice in a form the accountant can use and leave the classification to them.

How we run a rebate job

1. Count and photograph every fixture. Type, lamp wattage, mounting height and hours of operation, because the rebate tier is set by the new fixture’s lumens and the eligibility by the old fixture’s wattage.
2. Confirm the utility from the bill. AES or Duke decides the form, the cap and whether labor counts.
3. Pick the listing before the fixture. DLC version 6.0, listed as a high bay, in the lumen tier the space needs rather than the biggest one, with the light levels checked against IESNA.
4. Choose prescriptive or custom, then respect the sequence. One for one swaps are installed first and filed within 90 days. Redesigns get the pre application and the Letter of Intent before a single purchase order.
5. Install, recycle the old fixtures, and file. Itemized invoice showing the installation date, manufacturer specification sheets, model numbers matching to the character.
6. Take the rebate off the invoice if you prefer. AES lets the customer assign the rebate to the trade ally with a signature, so it is credited on our invoice instead of arriving as a check 6 to 8 weeks later; Duke allows the same where the contractor has a current Trade Ally Participation Agreement on file.^1,8

The full rebate service, including the paperwork, sits on our AES Indiana lighting rebates page. If you have a fixture count, or even a photo of the ceiling, send it over and we will come back with the tier, the rebate per fixture and a written number.