Indiana EV Charging Rebates in 2026: AES Indiana, Duke Energy and the Federal 30C Credit, Explained for Fleet Owners

Where it stands today: the federal 30C credit cannot be claimed for any charging property placed in service after June 30, 2026, so a charger installed now gets no federal credit. AES Indiana, which serves Indianapolis, still runs a business rebate for fleet charging, paying per port with a cap of half the project. Duke Energy Indiana, which serves Plainfield, Whitestown, Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Westfield, Zionsville and Greenwood, has no charger rebate in 2026 and offers an on bill rental instead. The state’s charging grants go to public fast charging sites on the interstates, not to private depots. What a business is left with is the AES rebate if it is on AES, and full expensing or bonus depreciation on the whole install wherever it is.

The federal 30C credit is over for new installs

The IRS says it in the instructions for the credit’s own form: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed the termination date for the section 30C alternative fuel vehicle refueling property credit from December 31, 2032, to June 30, 2026, and you can’t claim the credit for alternative fuel vehicle refueling property placed in service after June 30, 2026.¹ The IRS’s summary of that law repeats it, lists the other terminations alongside it, and names no replacement for charging property.² The Department of Energy’s incentive database now heads its entry for the credit with the word expired and the date.⁵

For the record, what it was while it ran: for property placed in service at a business from January 1, 2023 to June 30, 2026, 6 percent of the cost up to $100,000 per item, or 30 percent with the same cap where prevailing wage and apprenticeship rules were met, with an item being each charging port, and only in a low income or non urban census tract.³ The test on every IRS page is placed in service, not ordered or started, so a depot that energized on July 1 missed it and a depot that energized on June 30 claims it on Form 8911 for that tax year.^1,4

AES Indiana: the rebate that still pays, and its one big condition

AES Indiana runs three business EV programs through its implementer CLEAResult: a one time rebate on charger installation, a free fleet electrification advisory service, and a managed charging rewards program paying $50 per port.^6,9 The rebate program pages sit behind a bot wall that blocks automated readers, so the figures below are from the program’s own page as archived in February 2026, and we confirm them with the AES EV team on every application before a customer relies on them.⁸

The standard rebate is $6,000 per port for Level 2 or DC fast chargers under 50 kilowatts and $37,000 per port for DC fast chargers of 50 kilowatts and above, capped at 50 percent of eligible project costs, $150,000 per property and $500,000 per customer account.⁸ A disadvantaged community tier pays $9,000 and $50,000 per port at 100 percent of eligible costs up to $200,000 per property, for sites in a federally designated disadvantaged community that benefit from public use of the chargers.⁸ Ports count separately only if they can deliver power simultaneously, awards are reserved first come, first served, and the program wants applicants who have a plan and have not started construction.⁸

The condition that decides most applications is who the chargers serve. The program requires chargers used primarily for fueling commercially owned and operated EVs, fleet vehicles used for delivery, transit and other on road commercial operations, and it excludes chargers primarily used to fuel personal use EVs placed at business locations for customer or employee charging of commuter vehicles.⁸ A workplace charging bank for staff cars is not a fleet depot in AES’s eyes, and the application will say so. Our fleet charging page and workplace charging page are split for that reason.

One more thing to take off the old slide: AES’s Rate EVX, the special EV rate, closed to new enrollments on February 29, 2024, and no other commercial EV rate appears on AES’s pages today.⁷

Duke Energy Indiana: no rebate, and a rental instead

Duke Energy’s business EV page, with Indiana selected, lists one thing: the Charger Solution, under which customers can rent a Level 2 or DC fast charger and pay a flat rate each month.¹⁰ The Charger Prep Credit that Duke offers in the Carolinas and Florida returns a plain message for an Indiana address: this offering is not available in your area.¹¹ The Fleet Electrification Advisory Service page says Duke is currently not accepting applications.¹²

The $500 per charger rebate that still turns up in incentive databases was a pilot. Duke’s own release from September 2022 describes four two year pilot programs approved by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, launching October 1, 2022 and running 24 months each, with $500 per Level 2 station, a minimum of 4 stations, and a maximum of 20 per participant.¹³ That window closed in the autumn of 2024. The program’s URL now returns page not found, while the DSIRE database still listed the rebate as of September 2025, which is why it keeps being quoted.¹⁴

The rental is a real option and worth understanding. On the Indiana business store, Level 2 units list from $15.23 to $223.64 a month depending on the charger, and DC fast chargers from $322.42 to $1,767.83 a month, on terms of 48 months for Level 2 and 8 years for DC fast, with Duke owning and maintaining the equipment.^15,16 Duke’s description of what the fee covers is the charger, its installation, maintenance, network access and repair; what it does not cover is site preparation work to prepare the site for charger installation: breaker, conduit, wiring, increased capacity, and the electricity itself.¹⁷ The store’s own steps require consulting an electrical contractor for the site readiness survey.¹⁵

Which utility serves your site

The rebate question is settled by the utility name on the bill, and the boundary does not follow the county line. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission’s own service territory map, queried point by point, returns Indianapolis Power and Light, which does business as AES Indiana, for Indianapolis, and Duke Energy for Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Westfield, Zionsville, Plainfield, Whitestown and Greenwood.¹⁸ AES’s filed service area lists Indianapolis, Speedway, Beech Grove, Lawrence, Southport, Mooresville and a few other communities, and none of those eight suburbs.¹⁹ Edges are real: Zionsville’s town site says Duke serves east of Ford Road and Boone REMC serves west of it, and Fishers tells new residents their power company is either Duke Energy or Nine Star.^20,21

Indiana Michigan Power’s program is worth knowing about because it shows what a live pilot looks like: a stated per port amount, a qualifying area bonus and a fleet tariff, all on the utility’s own page.²² NIPSCO says it is not offering any credit or rebate programs for EVs or charging.²³ The co-ops around Indianapolis publish residential items at most.⁵

State and federal grant money reaches public sites, not depots

Indiana’s charging grant program is INDOT’s Charging the Crossroads, the state’s use of federal NEVI formula funds, and it is built around the federally designated Alternative Fuel Corridors: up to 80 percent of project costs covered by federal funds with the award recipient covering the match, and stations required to be located along the corridors.²⁴ After revised federal guidance on August 11, 2025, INDOT resumed contracting the first round of 39 contingent awards announced in 2024, about $31.55 million including cost share, and its deployment plan describes a second funding round of roughly 20 additional sites that was not open as of this writing.^24,25 These are public fast charging sites run by owner operators; a private fleet yard in an industrial park is not what the program funds.

The federal discretionary program, the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grants, is open to public bodies, its second round recipients have been announced, and the Federal Highway Administration says no estimated date for a future funding notice is available.²⁶ Indiana has no state tax credit or state rebate for chargers; the Department of Energy’s Indiana list contains only a compressed natural gas road tax credit, the statute that lets utilities propose charger pilots, and the rule that a business operating public chargers is not a public utility.⁵

What every business can still use: expensing and bonus depreciation

The tax help that survived is on the depreciation side. IRS Publication 946 for 2025 states that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reinstated the 100 percent special depreciation allowance for certain qualified property acquired and placed in service after January 19, 2025, and that unless you elect out, you must take it.²⁷ Section 179 expensing runs to $2,500,000 for tax years beginning in 2025 and $2,560,000 for tax years beginning in 2026, reduced once the year’s qualifying purchases pass $4,000,000 and $4,090,000 respectively.^27,28

Whether a given charger and its installation are qualified property, and in which class, is your CPA’s call, so we do 2 things to make that call easy: the invoice separates the chargers, the make ready electrical work and the utility charges, and the placed in service date is written on it. Combined with the AES rebate on an AES site, that is how a depot gets financed now that the credit is gone.

How we plan a fleet depot in 2026

1. Read the bill. AES or Duke decides whether there is a rebate at all, and the IURC map is checked for any site near a boundary.
2. On AES, apply before construction. The rebate is reserved first come, first served for applicants who have a plan and have not started, so the application goes in with the design, and the fleet use test is answered honestly: delivery and service vehicles yes, employee commuter charging no.
3. Size the service for the depot, not the first phase. A commercial Level 2 port runs at 208 volts on a dedicated circuit and a DC fast charger needs three phase power at hundreds of amps, so the make ready is designed with load management and the utility’s load sheet in hand. Our panel and service upgrade guide walks through that decision and the equipment lead times behind it.
4. On Duke, compare the rental against owning with the site prep priced the same way in both columns, because it is the customer’s cost either way.
5. Document for the CPA. Chargers, electrical work and utility charges itemized, with the placed in service date.

We design and build the make ready, the pedestals and the panel work for fleet, workplace and multifamily charging across the metro, and we handle the AES application with the customer. If you have a vehicle count and a site plan, send them over and we will come back with the utility, the rebate that applies and a written number for the electrical work.