Do heat pumps work in the cold?

Yes. Today's cold-climate heat pumps can heat your home on the coldest winter nights, and they keep running down to −13°F. They put out less heat and use more electricity as it gets colder, so it's worth running the numbers for your home.

How cold it gets here

In a normal Connecticut winter it's below 13°F for about 80 hours, out of about 5,600 hours when your house needs heat. The coldest hour is about 2°F.

What changes when it's colder

At 47°F the heat pumps we track put out about 4 times as much heat as the electricity they use. At 5°F it's about 2 times, and they still give about 74% of their full heat. At −13°F that drops to about 52%.

Is it still cheaper than oil?

At today's prices it is, even on the coldest night. With oil at $5.40 a gallon and electricity at 24¢ a kWh, a heat pump beats an oil boiler as long as it makes about 1.3 times the heat it uses. If oil gets cheaper, there's a temperature where oil wins, and our calculator finds it for your home.