How a Colorado HVAC contractor stopped retyping Xcel Energy rebate applications
Electrify Colorado Mechanical installs heat pumps and heat pump water heaters across the Denver metropolitan area, and every installation comes with an Xcel Energy rebate application that helps the customer afford the equipment. Stephen Hong files 5–25 of them a month. The data was already in his invoices, spec sheets and utility bills; with Instafill.ai it now goes into the rebate forms with field-level precision instead of being typed again for each one.
At a glance
- Company Electrify Colorado Mechanical
- Industry HVAC: heat pumps and heat pump water heaters
- Location Denver metro area, Colorado
- Forms Xcel Energy CO Residential HVAC Rebates and 2025 Whole Home Efficiency Rebate applications
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Results
5–25 Xcel Energy rebate applications a month
99% of fields filled automatically
2 forms tuned: HVAC Rebates and Whole Home Efficiency - Form categories HVAC forms
The challenge
Each application is one of two Xcel Energy forms: the CO Residential HVAC Rebates Application or the 2025 Whole Home Efficiency Rebate Application. Its answers come from four places: customer invoices (equipment model numbers, AHRI certificates, pricing, installation dates), manufacturer spec sheets (efficiency ratings and capacity), utility bills (account numbers and service addresses) and customer contracts (contact and property details). The customer, contractor and third-party processor details repeat on every application.
Accuracy decides when the rebate is paid: an incorrect SEER2, EER2 or HSPF2 value delays processing and payment. The forms have sections for heat pumps, water heaters, furnaces and boilers, and a value in the wrong section, or in one that does not apply, gets an application rejected by the utility's reviewers. Generic form-filling tools could not keep that precision. Stephen spent two months trying to build his own automation before he found Instafill.ai, and even Instafill.ai's first, untuned fills tripped on it:
"In the past when we have given your company an invoice that says serial number and then a 10 digit serial number, the Instafill wants to put that serial number everywhere it says serial number on the form. … We want it to be the heat pump serial number, the water heater serial number, or the furnace, and nowhere else."
— Stephen Hong
The solution
Stephen sent the blank forms, sample customer data as a CSV file, completed applications showing the expected result, and the invoices and spec sheets the data comes from. The Instafill.ai team worked on those exact PDFs and fine-tuned each form: the filler now skips the furnace and boiler sections, keeps customer and contractor details from crossing over, and takes AHRI numbers and efficiency ratings straight from the invoice or spec sheet values when a value appears more than once.
Structured data is faster and more accurate for the AI to read than a PDF, so Stephen now exports the job data as CSV from the NEIEP website and fills the forms from that file. A single number, such as a utility account number, is quicker to type than to find and attach the file it sits in, so he types it in next to the attached files. The AI fills 99% of the fields; the typed values cover the rest.
Batch filling from a spreadsheet produces a submission-ready PDF for each job. Stephen also changed one habit: instead of having customers sign a blank form and filling it in later, he now fills the form first and has it signed at the end.
The results
Customer and contractor details land in the same places on every form in the packet, and equipment model numbers and efficiency ratings match the source documents. Stephen no longer enters the same information several times: the data he already keeps as part of the job flows into the rebate forms.
"There is a large improvement between what I was experiencing and what I can do now in the platform."
— Stephen Hong, Electrify Colorado Mechanical
The same Xcel Energy forms are filed every day by hundreds of HVAC contractors across Colorado, with the same mix of sources, the same technical values and the same signature step.
