Naugatuck, CT: the heat pump payback math

Here in Naugatuck, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Naugatuck 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. Running costs here land $368 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Naugatuck's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Naugatuck's weather, in the numbers that matter

5472 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Naugatuck has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 579 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 10°F here (record low -0.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.94 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, Naugatuck sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station WATERBURY-OXFORD AIRPORT, 4.2 miles from Naugatuck — the closest one on record.

Naugatuck's running-cost comparison, in dollars

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,713 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,551 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 57 Mcf a year at 16.83 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,183 a year (electricity here runs 29.78¢/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 $9,019 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Naugatuck heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $2,799 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 2.9 years.

How Naugatuck compares nationally

Among 3206 cities, Naugatuck's winter puts it at rank 391 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1272 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. 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 Naugatuck

Naugatuck, Connecticut is home to about 32,116 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 Naugatuck, 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 Naugatuck's 2.94 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Naugatuck's 10°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.