Should Everett switch to a heat pump?
In Everett, the extra upfront cost technically comes back, just not before the equipment wears out. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Everett's residents would see roughly $157 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 22.2 years. Everett's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Why Everett's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Everett racks up 5029 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 807 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 14°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 10°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.04 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Everett sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from GEN E L LOGAN INTERNATIONAL A, the closest NOAA station, 3.9 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for Everett
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,189 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,470 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 52 Mcf a year at 25.06 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,628 a year (electricity here runs 30.15¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 85.7 years; over 15 years the net position sits $1,138 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Everett, compared
Gas isn't universal in Everett — many houses run on electric heat already. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. Switching saves about $2,684 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 3 years.
How Everett compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Everett's winter puts it at rank 663 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 785 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.
Next step for 51,825 people in Everett
About 51,825 people live in Everett, Massachusetts, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Everett's 3.04 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 14°F design temperature, Everett sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.