Long Beach, CA: the heat pump payback math
In Long Beach, the math is close enough that it comes down to how long you plan to stay. 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). Long Beach's residents would see roughly $114 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 8.8 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Long Beach's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Long Beach actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Long Beach racks up 1041 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 884 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 41°F, against a record low of 39.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.42 for the recommended standard unit. Long Beach's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium — a standard unit holds up fine. These numbers come from LONG BEACH / DAUGHERTY FIELD, the closest NOAA station, 2.5 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 771 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $500 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 11 Mcf a year at 22.01 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $615 a year (electricity here runs 32.83¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 96.3 years, leaving the 15-year total $714 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Long Beach heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Long Beach's answer improves. The saving here runs about $741 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 7.4 years.
How Long Beach compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Long Beach's winter puts it at rank 2882 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 44 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 Long Beach
Long Beach, California is home to about 450,901 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 Long Beach, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Long Beach's 3.42 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Homes in Long Beach without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead — the numbers there differ from the gas case above.