Heat Pump Payback in Depew, NY

Should Depew switch to a heat pump?

Here in Depew, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Running costs here land $296 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Depew's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Compare against another city

This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Depew. Look one up here.

How cold Depew actually gets

5278 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Depew has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 831 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 6.1°F here (coldest 2024 reading 3°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.85 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Depew sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station Buffalo Niagara International, 2.5 miles from Depew, the closest one on record.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,689 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,577 a year. That compares with roughly 55 Mcf a year of gas at Depew's $17.58 per-Mcf rate, about $1,281 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 29.22¢/kWh. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $9,943 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.

How sensitive Depew's result is to prices

For the verdict in Depew to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 22.4¢/kWh from 29.22¢, or gas climb past $22.97 per Mcf from $17.58. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in Depew; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.

Electric resistance heat in Depew, compared

Plenty of homes in Depew heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Depew's answer improves. The saving here runs about $2,643 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 3.8 years.

Depew against the rest of the country

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Depew comes in at 519 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2402 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step if you live in Depew

Depew, New York is home to about 14,910 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 Depew, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

Where Depew's figure comes from

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Depew's 2.85 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 6.1°F design temperature, Depew sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.