Heat Pump Payback in Kenner, LA
Is a heat pump worth it in Kenner?
This one's marginal in Kenner: it only clears if you stay long enough. $3,000 is what Kenner would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Kenner's residents would see roughly $278 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 10.8 years. It's a genuine toss-up here, Kenner's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Kenner. Look one up here.
Kenner's weather, in the numbers that matter
Kenner barely has a winter to speak of, 853 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 3604 cooling degree days. 32°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 24.1°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.15 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Kenner's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Louis Armstrong New Orleans I, 1.7 miles from Kenner.
Kenner's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 686 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $508 a year. That compares with roughly 9 Mcf a year of gas at Kenner's $17.38 per-Mcf rate, about $786 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 13.52¢/kWh. Buying outright rather than at replacement time stretches payback to longer than the 15-year equipment life. Over 15 years, compared with a like-for-like replacement, the heat pump leaves you $1,166 ahead.
What would change Kenner's answer
In Kenner the cooling savings outweigh the extra electricity for heating, so no plausible change in the electricity rate would make the old furnace and AC cheaper to run. A useful quote test for Kenner: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $2,780 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $1,946.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Kenner heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Kenner's answer improves. The gap still doesn't close: the $7,500 incremental cost outlasts the 15-year equipment life here even against resistance heat.
Kenner against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Kenner's winter puts it at rank 2947 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 608 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
What to do with this number in Kenner
Kenner, Louisiana is home to about 64,650 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 Kenner, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Kenner's 3.15 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Homes in Kenner without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.