Heat Pump Payback in Biddeford, ME
Biddeford, ME: the heat pump payback math
Biddeford is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $5,500 is what Biddeford would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Running costs here land $285 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Biddeford's numbers say wait.
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The climate behind Biddeford's payback figure
5779 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Biddeford has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 390 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 10°F here (coldest 2024 reading 4.3°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.94 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Biddeford needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. These numbers come from Wells Reserve, the closest NOAA station, 10.8 miles out.
Biddeford's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,977 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,576 a year. Biddeford's gas rate of $18.95 per Mcf, applied to the 60 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $1,291 a year, against 29.68¢ per kWh for electricity. With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $9,781 behind.
How sensitive Biddeford's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Biddeford if electricity fell to 23.7¢/kWh (from 29.68¢) or gas rose above $23.69 per Mcf (from $18.95). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Biddeford, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Biddeford, compared
Not every home in Biddeford has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Biddeford's answer improves. Switching saves about $2,917 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 3.4 years.
How Biddeford compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Biddeford's winter puts it at rank 283 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1758 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
What to do with this number in Biddeford
About 22,370 people live in Biddeford, Maine, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here, the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Biddeford's 2.94 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Biddeford's 10°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.