Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Randolph Town, MA
The payback math works in Randolph Town on paper, past the equipment's own working life. 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). That premium is recovered through $134 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 26.2 years. Randolph Town's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Why Randolph Town's climate drives this number
4997 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Randolph Town has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 885 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. 10.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 5°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.96 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Randolph Town needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Source: NOAA station NORWOOD MEMORIAL AIRPORT, 6.3 miles from Randolph Town — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,275 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,516 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 52 Mcf a year of gas at Randolph Town's 25.06 per-Mcf rate — about $1,650 a year — against a local electricity rate of 30.15¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 101 years, for a 15-year net position $1,495 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Randolph Town, compared
Gas isn't universal in Randolph Town — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $2,644 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 3 years.
Where Randolph Town ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Randolph Town comes in at 709 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1169 by population, where 1 is largest. 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 Randolph Town
About 35,114 people live in Randolph Town, Massachusetts, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Randolph Town's 2.96 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Randolph Town's 10.9°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.