Heat Pump Payback in Suffolk, VA
Should Suffolk switch to a heat pump?
Suffolk technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Suffolk's residents would see roughly $236 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 23.3 years. Suffolk's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Suffolk. Look one up here.
The climate behind Suffolk's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Suffolk racks up 2893 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1613 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 16.9°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 Suffolk. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Suffolk Municipal Airport, 2.1 miles from Suffolk.
The yearly running costs in Suffolk
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 2,340 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $616 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 30 Mcf a year at $16.79 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $852 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 16.58¢/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 $1,954 behind.
How sensitive Suffolk's result is to prices
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 31.1¢/kWh (it is 16.58¢ now) or gas drops below $8.94 per Mcf (now $16.79); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Suffolk. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $236 a year saved, a difference under $1,652 pays back within 7 years here, and under $2,360 within 10.
Electric resistance heat in Suffolk, compared
Not every home in Suffolk has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. Switching saves about $945 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 10.6 years.
Where Suffolk ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Suffolk's winter puts it at rank 1954 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 325 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Suffolk
About 103,105 people live in Suffolk, Virginia, 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.
Where Suffolk's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Suffolk's 3.13 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 18°F design temperature, Suffolk sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.