Providence, RI: the heat pump payback math
Providence technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $3,500 is what Providence 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. That premium is recovered through $26 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 134.3 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Providence.
Providence's weather, in the numbers that matter
Providence has a real but manageable winter — 4645 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 852 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 14.9°F here (record low 11.1°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.06 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, Providence sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station PROVIDENCE, 1.9 miles from Providence — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,844 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,347 a year. Providence's gas rate of 21.66 per Mcf, applied to the 48 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,373 a year, against 29.48¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 518 years, for a 15-year net position $3,109 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Providence has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Providence's answer improves. About $2,446 a year comes back this way, enough that the 3.3-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Providence against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Providence comes in at 1056 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 134 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Providence, RI
Providence, Rhode Island is home to about 194,706 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 Providence, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Providence's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Providence's 3.06 seasonal COP and payback figure. Providence's 14.9°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.