Should Kenmore switch to a heat pump?

In Kenmore, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Kenmore 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. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $296 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Kenmore's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Kenmore's weather, in the numbers that matter

Kenmore has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5278 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 831 cooling degree days. 6.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 3°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.85 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Kenmore needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. These numbers come from BUFFALO NIAGARA INTERNATIONAL, the closest NOAA station, 7.1 miles out.

Kenmore's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,689 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,577 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 55 Mcf a year at 17.58 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,281 a year (electricity here runs 29.22¢/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 $7,943 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Not every home in Kenmore has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Kenmore's answer improves. About $2,643 a year comes back this way, enough that the 3-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.

Kenmore against the rest of the country

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Kenmore comes in at 518 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2400 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

What to do with this number in Kenmore

Kenmore, New York is home to about 14,936 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 Kenmore, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Reading further on this page's numbers

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Kenmore's 2.85 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 6.1°F design temperature, Kenmore sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.