New London, CT: the heat pump payback math
Here in New London, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $277 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's New London's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
New London's weather, in the numbers that matter
New London has a real but manageable winter — 4932 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 620 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 14°F here (record low 7°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.04 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, New London sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, GROTON-NEW LONDON AIRPORT, 2.5 miles from New London.
The month-to-month numbers for New London
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,108 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,381 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 51 Mcf a year at 16.83 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,104 a year (electricity here runs 29.78¢/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 $7,656 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in New London heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and New London's answer improves. The saving here runs about $2,578 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 3.1 years.
How New London compares nationally
New London lands at position 830 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1423 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step for 28,081 people in New London
New London, Connecticut is home to about 28,081 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 New London, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where New London's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind New London's 3.04 seasonal COP and payback figure. New London's 14°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.