Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Jamestown, NY
In Jamestown, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Jamestown 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. The heat pump would cost about $403 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Jamestown's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Jamestown's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Jamestown racks up 5496 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 370 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 3.9°F here (record low 1.4°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.79 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, Jamestown sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, CHAUTAUQUA CO/JAMESTOWN AP, 3.7 miles from Jamestown.
The month-to-month numbers for Jamestown
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,988 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,550 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 57 Mcf a year at 17.58 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,146 a year (electricity here runs 29.22¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $9,550 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Jamestown has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Jamestown's answer improves. The saving here runs about $2,657 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 3 years.
How Jamestown compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Jamestown comes in at 381 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1446 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Jamestown, NY
About 27,699 people live in Jamestown, New York, 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.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 2.79 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Jamestown's 3.9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.