East Palo Alto, CA: the heat pump payback math
The payback math works in East Palo Alto on paper, past the equipment's own working life. $1,000 is what East Palo Alto 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. East Palo Alto's residents would see roughly $29 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 34.7 years. East Palo Alto's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
The climate behind East Palo Alto's payback figure
1880 heating degree days pile up here every year, so East Palo Alto has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 531 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. 35.6°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 33.8°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.26 on the standard unit fit for this climate. A standard ducted system is enough here; East Palo Alto's design temperature doesn't justify the cold-climate premium. These numbers come from PALO ALTO AIRPORT OF SANTA CL, the closest NOAA station, 0.9 miles out.
East Palo Alto's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 1,460 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $628 a year. That compares with roughly 20 Mcf a year of gas at East Palo Alto's 22.01 per-Mcf rate — about $657 a year — against a local electricity rate of 32.83¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 381.4 years; over 15 years the net position sits $567 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in East Palo Alto has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and East Palo Alto's answer improves. About $1,161 a year comes back this way, enough that the 4.7-year payback clears the $5,500 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where East Palo Alto ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, East Palo Alto's winter puts it at rank 2490 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1374 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
What to do with this number in East Palo Alto
About 29,296 people live in East Palo Alto, California, 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.
Where East Palo Alto's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how East Palo Alto's 3.26 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. East Palo Alto's case is the "pays back too slowly to count" kind covered in the guide to cities where the math never really works.