Is a heat pump worth it in Hartford?

Here in Hartford, 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 $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). The heat pump would cost about $246 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Hartford's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Hartford's payback figure

Degree days tell the story here: Hartford racks up 4842 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 960 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 12°F here (record low 5°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.99 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, Hartford sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station HARTFORD-BRAINARD AIRPORT, 2.6 miles from Hartford — the closest one on record.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,101 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,465 a year. That compares with roughly 50 Mcf a year of gas at Hartford's 16.83 per-Mcf rate — about $1,219 a year — against a local electricity rate of 29.78¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $7,185 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Plenty of homes in Hartford heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hartford's answer improves. Switching saves about $2,557 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 3.1 years.

Where Hartford ranks in this dataset

Hartford lands at position 898 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 243 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Hartford, CT

About 122,129 people live in Hartford, Connecticut, 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.

Reading further on this page's numbers

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Hartford's 2.99 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 12°F design temperature, Hartford sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.