Rebate for replacing our gas stove
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The Victorian government will give you money for swapping a gas cooktop for induction. Up to $140, the website says.
It is actually worth about $200. I'll receive $120. The difference is what it costs to not be allowed to claim it yourself.
The scheme runs on certificates. Replacing gas with induction generates two Victorian Energy Efficiency Certificates, worth roughly $100 each depending on the day, because they're traded. But only an accredited provider can create and sell them. You cannot lodge anything directly, no matter how complete your paperwork is. An accredited provider does it for you, sells the certificates, and passes on a share of the proceeds — keeping the rest for the paperwork they handle and the price risk they carry on a traded certificate.
Victoria keeps a register of these accredited providers. Four of them will handle an induction cooktop for a householder, and none of it is hidden — but what they pass on varies more than you'd expect:
- Rebate Hub offers $90, though applications were closed when I looked
- RebateM8 offers up to $120, paid electronically
- MAC Trade Services doesn't cover freestanding cookers like ours
- Powrhouse passes on close to the full $200 — but only if they also do the installation, and ours was already in
So RebateM8 it was.
Then the timing. The induction activity was a pilot that closed on 30 June 2026. We bought on 28 March, which puts us inside the window, and I checked the government's ten-page product list to confirm our model is on it. Retrospective claims stay open until mid-2027, so there was no great hurry — except that eligibility also needs a current gas connection and a recent gas bill, and ours was days from being disconnected.
Which brings me to RebateM8's app.
It accepts documents from exactly one place: your phone's photo gallery. Not Files, not a PDF, not an email attachment. So our gas bill, a PDF, had to be converted to an image on the computer, added to the photo library, synced to the phone, and then chosen from the picker.
The invoice was worse. It's a photo I took in a shop in March, and the app's own picker gave no practical way to scroll back through several thousand images to reach it. In the end I made a fresh copy of the photo purely so it would appear at the top of the list.
Then I pressed Save, intending to finish it later. It submitted.
$120, being assessed.
The next morning, the process grew a human. RebateM8 emailed to say the invoice showed only an initial — "F" — and could I say who that was, and their relationship to me. We had bought the oven through Fran's Good Guys account, so the paperwork was in her name. I replied just after 11:30 explaining. By 12:34, Nikki had processed the application: the rebate would arrive "via an electronic eftpos card".
At 12:34 that same afternoon, the minute Nikki's email landed, my phone buzzed: Application Status Changed. Induction Cooktop rebate application status has been changed to Ready to Pay. It sits in the app in a cheerful green.
Tapping it, hoping to be paid, opens the eligibility questionnaire again, from question one. Have you claimed the VEU discount on an induction cooktop for this address? Do you have a gas connection? Was the home built two or more years ago?
Four days on, no eftpos card. I'll report back.
Coming up: the meter comes off.
Related Posts
- The installation this rebate is meant to help with Installing our induction stove 27 Jul 2026
- The cooker itself, and how long it took to arrive Oven bought in March, arrived in July 12 Jul 2026
- What the circuit cost, before any rebate Quotes to install an oven and induction cooktop 20 Jul 2026
- The switchboard investigation behind the install Where does this circuit go? 26 Jul 2026
- Off the gas for good Off the gas for good 30 Jul 2026
Links
- RebateM8 / 1st Energy Rebates, who handled our claim 1st Energy Rebates (RebateM8)
- Rebate Hub Rebate Hub
- Powrhouse — full rebate value if they do your install Powrhouse
- MAC Trade Services MAC Trade Services
- The VEU induction cooktop discount, and the register of accredited providers Victorian Energy Upgrades
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