Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Annapolis, MD
In Annapolis, the extra upfront cost technically comes back, just not before the equipment wears out. $3,500 is what Annapolis would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Lower bills claw that back: about $145 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 24.1 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Annapolis.
How cold Annapolis actually gets
3475 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Annapolis has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1524 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 21°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 16°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.2 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Annapolis — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from ANNAPOLIS, the closest NOAA station, 1.6 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for Annapolis
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 2,750 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $857 a year on electricity. Annapolis's gas rate of 16.14 per Mcf, applied to the 36 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,002 a year, against 21.16¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 92.9 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,321 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Annapolis — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Annapolis's answer improves. About $1,423 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.6-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
How Annapolis compares nationally
Annapolis lands at position 1779 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1011 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 40,689 people in Annapolis
Annapolis, Maryland is home to about 40,689 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Annapolis, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Annapolis's 3.2 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Annapolis's 21°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.