Updated March 2026 | Mike Cham, CTO, Encentiv Energy
DLC Premium was born with ambition. When the DesignLights Consortium® introduced the Premium tier in 2015, the premise was straightforward: the commercial lighting market needed a way to distinguish truly excellent products from merely adequate ones. Higher efficacy, tighter color consistency, better glare control, continuous dimming — these weren't just product features, they were arguments that the lighting industry was ready to compete on quality, not just watts saved.
For a few years, a handful of utilities agreed. Programs in New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and California developed incentive structures that paid more for Premium-qualified products.
It is now 2026, and the story has a different ending. DLC Premium has not collapsed, exactly — products still get listed, manufacturers still comply, and a small cluster of programs still differentiates on it. But as a force in the utility rebate ecosystem, it has faded to near-irrelevance. The numbers make this hard to argue with.
Not a single investor-owned utility in the United States currently offers differentiated incentives for DLC Premium.
The most significant development since our last analysis in 2021 is not any single program dropping Premium support — it is the complete absence of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) from the list. IOUs serve the overwhelming majority of US commercial electricity customers. When National Grid dropped differentiated DLC Premium rebates across New York and Rhode Island, and PG&E removed explicit Premium requirements for High Bay in California, the two programs that had done the most to establish DLC Premium as a mainstream rebate concept simply walked away.
EnergizeCT — the Eversource and United Illuminating joint brand that had offered some of the most structured Premium incentives in the country, including tiered rebates for Troffers and Parking Garage fixtures — no longer differentiates incentives by DLC tier.
What remains are municipal utilities, electric co-ops, and one state-level efficiency fund. These are not small or unimportant programs — many serve their customers well — but they are structurally different from IOUs. They tend to be smaller, less subject to the same regulatory cost-effectiveness scrutiny, and more likely to maintain program designs that reflect local priorities rather than statewide or national benchmarks.
The result is a DLC Premium landscape that, in the United States, is now exclusively a municipal and co-op phenomenon.
When we analyzed DLC Premium utility support in 2021, approximately 79 programs offered some form of differentiated incentive — covering roughly 6.1% of US commercial electric accounts. Here is where things stand in 2026:
| 2026 DLC Premium Coverage Snapshot | |
|---|---|
| Total utilities offering DLC Premium incentives | ~96 (US + Canada) |
| Investor-owned utilities | 0 |
| Municipal / Co-op utilities | ~94 (US) |
| Total US commercial electric accounts | 19,763,985 |
| Accounts served by DLC Premium utilities | ~202,198 |
| Share of US commercial accounts covered | ~1.0% |
| Coverage in 2021 | ~6.1% (decline of over 80%) |
The ~96 utilities in this count are mostly small co-ops in the upper Midwest served through the Bright Energy Solutions program — which supports Premium exclusively for refrigerated case lighting. Strip that out, and the number of programs supporting Premium for general commercial lighting categories is closer to a dozen.
One percent. That is the share of US commercial electricity customers who can walk into a utility rebate program today and receive more money for a DLC Premium fixture than a DLC Standard one. Five years ago that number was six times higher, and it was already considered underwhelming.
The programs that remain are worth understanding on their own terms, because they represent the full range of reasons a utility might still maintain DLC Premium support.
LADWP and Alameda Municipal Power have maintained DLC Premium support, in some cases requiring it outright rather than offering it as a premium tier. This is less a philosophical endorsement of light quality and more a downstream effect of California's Title 24 energy code, which has progressively raised the bar for commercial lighting efficiency. In a regulatory environment where Standard is already high, Premium can end up as the practical floor.
The Delaware Energy Efficiency Investment Fund covers essentially all commercial customers in Delaware through a portfolio of utilities, and has expanded its DLC Premium support to include both Troffers and High Bay fixtures at a 15%–25% uplift. As a state-administered fund rather than a traditional IOU program, EEIF faces different cost-effectiveness constraints and has more latitude to reflect program design goals beyond pure kWh savings.
Across Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, Bright Energy Solutions continues to offer DLC Premium incentives for refrigerated case lighting. This is a narrow but coherent application: case lighting runs continuously in grocery and convenience retail, efficiency gains are significant, and the lighting environment is relatively standardized. The niche focus may be exactly why this program works — it is not trying to apply Premium broadly.
A collection of municipal utilities in Michigan now offer DLC Premium support across all categories — a new entrant since 2021. The specifics vary by municipality, and the total customer count is modest, but it signals that at least some utilities in the Midwest are still open to the concept.
Efficiency Nova Scotia and Hydro Quebec both continue to offer meaningful DLC Premium incentives — Nova Scotia for High Bay (20%–50% uplift), Hydro Quebec across multiple categories in its kilolumen-based rate structure. Canadian provincial programs operate under different regulatory frameworks than US IOUs and have historically been more receptive to light quality as a program value.
The following table reflects the complete current landscape of utility programs offering DLC Premium differentiated incentives, drawn from the Encentivizer database.
| Country | State/Prov | Program | Categories | % Increase | # Utilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CA | NS | Efficiency Nova Scotia | High Bay | 20%–50% | 1 |
| CA | QC | Hydro Quebec | All | Varies | 1 |
| US | CA | LADWP, Alameda | All | 50%, Required | 2 |
| US | CT | South Norwalk | Troffers | Varies | 1 |
| US | DE | EEIF | Troffers, High Bay | 15%–25% | 15 |
| US | IA | Bright Energy Solutions | Case Lighting | 20%–30% | 18 |
| US | MI | Municipals | All | Varies | 16 |
| US | MN | Bright Energy Solutions | Case Lighting | 20%–30% | 25 |
| US | ND | Bright Energy Solutions | Case Lighting | 20%–30% | 5 |
| US | SD | Bright Energy Solutions | Case Lighting | 20%–30% | 12 |
Understanding the IOU departure requires understanding how these programs are evaluated. IOUs operate under state regulatory oversight, and their efficiency programs are typically subject to cost-effectiveness tests — frameworks that measure the cost of acquiring each kilowatt-hour of savings against the benefit of that savings to the ratepayer and the grid. The most common tests are the Total Resource Cost test and the Program Administrator Cost test.
DLC Premium's incremental energy savings over DLC Standard are real but modest. In the current QPL 6.0 framework, the efficacy gap between Standard and Premium varies by category but is generally in the range of 10%–15%. That translates directly into slightly higher rebates in savings-based programs — but it does not justify a separately administered tier with its own thresholds, testing requirements, and rebate structures.
The quality-of-light arguments — better color consistency, lower glare, continuous dimming capability, flicker control — are compelling to lighting designers and end users, but they do not show up in a kWh savings calculation. And until a public utility commission formally recognizes health co-benefits or productivity gains as a program value, those arguments cannot move the needle on cost-effectiveness scores.
"Utilities are judged on cost per kilowatt-hour saved. Light quality does not appear in that equation."
There was also a practical program management argument. Maintaining a two-tier structure — Standard and Premium — requires more database management, more training for trade allies, and more explanation to end customers. When the incremental rebate is modest and the uptake is low, the administrative overhead stops being worth it. Program managers at large IOUs have hundreds of measures to manage; a tier that accounts for a small fraction of rebate volume does not survive budget season indefinitely.
For manufacturers who have invested in DLC Premium compliance — the additional testing, the documentation, the product development decisions around continuous dimming and tighter color tolerances — this trajectory is worth examining honestly.
The rebate case for DLC Premium registration is now geographically tiny. Unless a meaningful share of your business runs through LADWP, Delaware utilities, Hydro Quebec, or the upper Midwest co-op network, the incremental rebate value of Premium over Standard is effectively zero for your customers. That does not mean Premium registration is worthless — but the argument for it shifts considerably.
The harder question for manufacturers is product strategy. DLC Premium's requirements — continuous dimming, tighter chromaticity, flicker compliance, enhanced lumen maintenance — represent real quality floors. Products designed to meet Premium are, in most cases, genuinely better. Whether the market is willing to pay for that in the absence of a rebate uplift is a commercial question, not a technical one.
DLC Premium is not dead. It is listed, it is tested for, and it is referenced in specifications. But as a utility rebate driver — the function it was arguably designed to serve — it has been reduced to a rounding error. One percent of US commercial accounts. Zero investor-owned utilities.
For manufacturers and distributors tracking where to invest compliance resources: the rebate geography is clear. For everyone else, Premium has become a quality mark looking for a market willing to value it.
Data sourced from the Encentivizer® rebate database. For program-level rebate analysis by territory, contact Encentiv Energy.