Should New York switch to a heat pump?
In New York, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Running costs here land $15 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: New York's numbers say wait.
The climate behind New York's payback figure
3707 heating degree days pile up here every year, so New York has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1346 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 19°F here (record low 17.1°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.16 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in New York — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station PORT AUTH DOWNTN MANHATTAN WA, 4.5 miles from New York — the closest one on record.
New York's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 2,970 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,203 a year. New York's gas rate of 17.58 per Mcf, applied to the 39 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,188 a year, against 29.22¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $3,723 behind.
Electric resistance heat in New York, compared
Not every home in New York has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and New York's answer improves. About $2,049 a year comes back this way, enough that the 3.9-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
New York against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, New York comes in at 1676 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in New York
About 8,478,072 people live in New York, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind New York's 3.16 seasonal COP and payback figure. New York's 19°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.