Heat Pump Payback in Raleigh, NC
Is a heat pump worth it in Raleigh?
Raleigh technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $5,500 is what Raleigh would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Raleigh's residents would see roughly $258 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 21.3 years. Raleigh's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Raleigh. Look one up here.
The climate behind Raleigh's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Raleigh racks up 2409 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 2068 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 18°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was 18°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.13 for the recommended cold-climate unit. The average winter here is gentle, but sizing follows the cold snaps, and 18°F is below the 25°F point where a standard unit leans on resistance backup, so a cold-climate unit is what gets priced for Raleigh. These numbers come from Raleigh-Durham International, the closest NOAA station, 8.9 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Raleigh
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,949 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $554 a year. That compares with roughly 25 Mcf a year of gas at Raleigh's $16.42 per-Mcf rate, about $812 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 14.93¢/kWh. Buying outright rather than at replacement time stretches payback to longer than the 15-year equipment life. Over 15 years, compared with a like-for-like replacement, the heat pump leaves you $1,632 behind.
What would change Raleigh's answer
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 39.9¢/kWh (it is 14.93¢ now) or gas drops below $6.14 per Mcf (now $16.42); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Raleigh. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $258 a year saved, a difference under $1,806 pays back within 7 years here, and under $2,580 within 10.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Raleigh heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Raleigh's answer improves. Switching saves about $757 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 13.2 years.
How Raleigh compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Raleigh comes in at 2231 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 39 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Raleigh, NC
About 499,825 people live in Raleigh, North Carolina, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Raleigh's 3.13 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 18°F design temperature, Raleigh sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.