Mount Vernon, NY: the heat pump payback math
Here in Mount Vernon, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Mount Vernon 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 $95 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Mount Vernon's numbers say wait.
Why Mount Vernon's climate drives this number
Mount Vernon has a real but manageable winter — 4161 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 906 cooling degree days. 19.2°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 13.8°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.16 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Mount Vernon 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, KINGS POINT, 8.4 miles from Mount Vernon.
The month-to-month numbers for Mount Vernon
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 3,334 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,200 a year. That compares with roughly 43 Mcf a year of gas at Mount Vernon's 17.58 per-Mcf rate — about $1,105 a year — against a local electricity rate of 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 $4,926 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Mount Vernon, compared
Gas isn't universal in Mount Vernon — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $2,222 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 3.6 years.
How Mount Vernon compares nationally
Mount Vernon lands at position 1422 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 535 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 71,999 people in Mount Vernon
About 71,999 people live in Mount Vernon, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 3.16 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a 19.2°F design temperature, Mount Vernon sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.