Two different ways to fail

A city can fail to clear a heat pump payback in two genuinely different ways, and this site's model distinguishes them rather than lumping both into one vague "no." The first is costing more to run, every single year, with no payback at all. The second is technically saving money, just too slowly to matter before the equipment wears out.

When it costs more every year

Minneapolis, MN burns cheap gas at under $11 per Mcf, and its cold winters mean a heat pump there needs the cold-climate class of unit — still enough to leave the running cost about $198 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces. Fargo, ND and Anchorage, AK show the same pattern more starkly: Anchorage's brutal winters push the gap to roughly $1,630 a year, because extreme cold drags the seasonal COP down toward the model's floor while gas stays cheap. No amount of running the numbers differently changes that; it is genuinely cheaper to keep burning gas in these cities today.

When it pays back, just not in time

Los Angeles, CA tells a different story: switching there actually saves about $41 a year, a real if tiny number, but recovering the roughly $1,000 incremental cost at that rate takes 24.3 years — well past the 15-year equipment life this site uses for the lifetime comparison. Philadelphia, PA and Columbus, OH land in the same trap: positive savings, technically correct arithmetic, and a payback clock that never finishes before the machine itself would need replacing anyway.

Why the credit doesn't rescue the first kind

The federal tax credit (see the tax credit guide) lowers the upfront cost, but it cannot fix a negative annual number — Minneapolis and Anchorage still show a credit amount on their pages, and it still does not matter, because there is no positive savings rate for a lower upfront cost to be recovered against. The credit only ever shortens an ALREADY-positive payback; it cannot create one where the running cost itself is unfavourable. What can turn these cities around is a different incumbent, covered in the electric-resistance guide.