Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Concord, NH

Concord is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $248 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Concord's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Concord actually gets

Concord has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 6218 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 593 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 3°F, against a record low of -2.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.77 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Concord sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station CONCORD MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 3.5 miles from Concord — the closest one on record.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,684 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,659 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 65 Mcf a year at 18.61 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,411 a year (electricity here runs 26.80¢/kWh). Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $7,216 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Plenty of homes in Concord heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $2,767 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 2.9 years.

How Concord compares nationally

Concord lands at position 144 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 921 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step for 44,674 people in Concord

Concord, New Hampshire is home to about 44,674 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 Concord, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Concord's 2.77 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Concord's 3°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.