Is a heat pump worth it in Daly City?
Daly City is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $1,000 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Running costs here land $21 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Daly City's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Daly City's weather, in the numbers that matter
3372 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Daly City has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 29 cooling degree days, where summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 43.9°F here (record low 42.4°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.51 for the standard class of unit this climate calls for. Daly City's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium — a standard unit holds up fine. These numbers come from SAN FRANCISCO, the closest NOAA station, 7.3 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for Daly City
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 2,433 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $807 a year. That compares with roughly 35 Mcf a year of gas at Daly City's 22.01 per-Mcf rate — about $785 a year — against a local electricity rate of 32.83¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $1,322 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Daly City, compared
Not every home in Daly City has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Daly City's answer improves. Switching saves about $2,009 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $5,500 spent up front comes back in about 2.7 years.
How Daly City compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Daly City comes in at 1814 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 332 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 101,418 people in Daly City
Daly City, California is home to about 101,418 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 Daly City, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Daly City's 3.51 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Daly City is one of the cities where running costs land higher every year, not just slower to pay back — the guide to where this happens lays out why.