Heat Pump Payback in Norwich, CT
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Norwich, CT
In Norwich, 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 $5,500 more up front here. Running costs here land $372 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Norwich's numbers say wait.
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Why Norwich's climate drives this number
5520 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Norwich has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 649 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 9°F here (coldest 2024 reading 1.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.92 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, Norwich sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from Windham Airport, the closest NOAA station, 14.3 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,787 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,590 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 57 Mcf a year at $16.83 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,218 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 29.78¢/kWh). With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $11,084 behind.
What would change Norwich's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Norwich if electricity fell to 21.5¢/kWh (from 29.78¢) or gas rose above $23.31 per Mcf (from $16.83). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Norwich, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Norwich has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $2,823 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 3.5 years.
Norwich against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Norwich's winter puts it at rank 359 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1034 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 Norwich
About 39,993 people live in Norwich, Connecticut, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Norwich's 2.92 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 9°F design temperature, Norwich sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.