Should Taunton switch to a heat pump?
The payback math works in Taunton on paper, past the equipment's own working life. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. That premium is recovered through $129 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 27.2 years. Taunton's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
The climate behind Taunton's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Taunton racks up 4998 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 849 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 10.9°F here (record low 6.1°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.96 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Taunton 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, TAUNTON MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 4.2 miles from Taunton.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,276 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,507 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 52 Mcf a year at 25.06 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,636 a year (electricity here runs 30.15¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 104.8 years; over 15 years the net position sits $1,567 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Taunton heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. 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 $2,640 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.
Taunton against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Taunton comes in at 705 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 644 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step for 61,936 people in Taunton
About 61,936 people live in Taunton, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Taunton's 2.96 seasonal COP and payback figure. Taunton'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.