Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Inglewood, CA
This one's marginal in Inglewood: it only clears if you stay long enough. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $1,000 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Inglewood's residents would see roughly $81 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 12.4 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Inglewood's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Inglewood actually gets
Inglewood barely has a winter to speak of — 1268 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 622 cooling degree days. 44.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 44.1°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.51 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Inglewood's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium — a standard unit holds up fine. These numbers come from NRTHORP FLD/HATHRN MUNI AP, the closest NOAA station, 2.4 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 915 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $474 a year. That compares with roughly 13 Mcf a year of gas at Inglewood's 22.01 per-Mcf rate — about $555 a year — against a local electricity rate of 32.83¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 136 years; over 15 years the net position sits $213 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Inglewood — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Inglewood's answer improves. About $844 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.5-year payback clears the $5,500 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Inglewood ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Inglewood comes in at 2769 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 328 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Next step for 102,774 people in Inglewood
Inglewood, California is home to about 102,774 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 Inglewood, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Inglewood's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Inglewood's 3.51 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Homes in Inglewood without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead — the numbers there differ from the gas case above.