Help With Your Electric Bill in Idaho: LIHEAP

Staggered, and about to open. Seasonal heating assistance: households with a child under six, an elderly member or a disabled member can apply beginning in OCTOBER; everyone else beginning in NOVEMBER. DHW gives the month, not a date. One benefit payment per program year (October - September). Funding is limited and first-come, first-served. Crisis heating assistance is available YEAR-ROUND, also first-come, first-served.

Dates move every year and most states stop taking applications when the money runs out, not on the closing date. Checked Sep 10, 2026 — confirm before you count on it.

Crisis heating assistance, open year-round through your Community Action Agency. DHW's goal is to resolve the crisis within 48 hours. You must meet the income limits, must NOT have received a crisis payment in the last 12 months, and must meet one of: at risk of disconnection or already disconnected; a past-due balance or arrears on a utility bill; or less than 48 hours of bulk fuel left.

Use the Application for Energy Assistance (it covers LIHEAP and the Weatherization Assistance Program at once) and take it to your local Community Action Agency - the CAA determines eligibility, not the state. Agency finder on the DHW heating assistance pages.

Idaho does not publish the benefit amounts on the page we read. It is paid to the utility, not to you, and depends on household size, income and fuel type.

Proof of identity, proof of a heating expense, proof that a household member is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident, and income documentation. Your Community Action Agency sets the rest.

No blanket winter moratorium, but IDAPA 31.21.01.306 (Idaho PUC): a gas or electric utility may not terminate or threaten to terminate service from DECEMBER through MARCH to a residential customer who declares they cannot pay in full and whose household includes children (18 or under), elderly (62 or older) or infirm persons. Those households must be offered a Winter Payment Plan; if they set one up before November 1 the protection runs NOVEMBER through March. Payments under the plan are half the Level Pay Plan amount, and missing them cancels the protection. You must then pay or renegotiate on or after March 1 (no plan) or April 1 (with a plan). Service also follows you if you move to another address served by the same utility in December, January or February.

This comes from the Idaho utility commission, not from the energy assistance programme — they are different offices and only one of them publishes it.

The seasonal-benefit page was last updated 4-9-2026 and the program page 12-10-2025, so the income table is the FFY2026 one.

In most states the same office runs SNAP food benefits, and receiving one often makes the other automatic or faster. SNAP in Idaho →