What people actually ask when the heat pump bill arrives

Does this sound right?

2 months ago we got the heat pump... our bill is about $1,000 a month for the last 2 months, yes it's been cold as hell but this sounds insane since our old electric system from the 1980s was nearly half this cost. Does this sound right?

Homeowner, southern New Hampshire

This is the most common way the question gets asked and it is almost unanswerable in that form, because a dollar figure contains three things at once: how much energy you used, what you paid per unit, and how cold it was. Any of the three can move enough to explain a doubling.

The test that does work

Take a winter month's kilowatt hours. Subtract a shoulder month, usually October, to remove lighting, appliances and hot water. What is left is heating. Then divide by floor area and by that month's heating degree days.

Across the households I have collected, most land between 0.53 and 0.80 watt hours per square foot per heating degree day. That band holds across 1,100 to 3,800 square feet, across New England, the Mid Atlantic, the Midwest and Colorado, on equipment from at least six manufacturers. If you are inside it, your system is behaving normally and your bill is expensive for some other reason.

The full table is in what people actually pay.

Why did my bill not drop the way I was told it would?

When I asked will my bill be much lower from all 3 of the companies I got quoted, everyone gave me a big 'oh yeah, absolutely' so just seeing how much of a sucker I am.

Homeowner, southern New Hampshire

There are three honest answers and they are very different from each other, so it matters which one you are in.

1. You switched from natural gas, and gas is cheap

Gas is the cheapest common heating fuel in the United States per unit of delivered energy. On running cost alone, a heat pump loses to a modern gas furnace in most states. That is not a fault, it is the price ratio, and it is what the state pages exist to tell you before you buy rather than after.

2. Your rate went up, or the winter was colder

Compare kilowatt hours against kilowatt hours, for the same month, and adjust for degree days. The New Hampshire household above had actually used 10% less electricity than the previous year, in a colder winter, while their bill roughly doubled. Their consumption improved and their cost did not.

3. Your heat pump is not doing the work

This is the one worth checking hardest, because it is fixable. If your previous system was electric resistance, the arithmetic is unusually clean: resistance heat has a coefficient of performance of exactly 1.0, so last year's meter reading is also a measurement of the heat your house needed.

For the New Hampshire household that calculation returns an implied seasonal COP of 1.24 to 1.42 against the 2.5 to 3.2 a working unit delivers, which puts half to two thirds of their heat on resistance strips in a $24,000 system. The compressor lockout page has a calculator that runs the same test on your own readings.

Everyone tells me my usage is insane. Is it?

I live in a 3500 square foot house in Orlando Florida, we have an electric vehicle that charges here, a pool and a hot tub and our HIGHEST month is a little over 3000kwh in the summer.

Commenter, replying to a New Hampshire homeowner in February

Comparisons like this are the least useful thing in any of these threads, and they are the most common. Cooling a house in Orlando works across a temperature difference of about 23 degrees. Heating a house in New Hampshire in February works across seventy. The physics is not comparable and neither are the bills.

The same problem appears in gentler forms. Someone with a bigger house and a lower bill, someone with the same square footage and half the usage. Almost none of it survives normalisation, because floor area alone tells you very little and the climate term is usually doing more work than anything the two people are discussing.

One useful thing does come out of these threads. When people post enough context to normalise, the results cluster tightly. The disagreement is mostly an artefact of comparing unlike things.

Is it my house or the equipment?

Insulation is great.

Homeowner, southern New Hampshire, whose house is the second worst performer in my dataset

Almost everyone describes their insulation as good, and most of them believe it. R-60 in the attic genuinely is good. It is also only one part of an envelope, and the parts people cannot see are usually the ones losing the heat.

Here is the honest way to separate the two, and it does not require trusting anyone's opinion of their own house.

1. Run the resistance test if you can. If your old system was electric, the implied COP calculation tells you directly whether the machine is working. A COP near 1.3 is an equipment or configuration problem, full stop. No house is bad enough to produce that from a working heat pump.
2. If you cannot, normalise and compare. Well outside the 0.53 to 0.80 band with a system you believe is working points at the envelope.
3. Then measure rather than guess. A blower door test costs around $300 and tells you what your air leakage actually is. An energy auditor in one of these threads made the point better than I can.

Everyone is diagnosing from symptoms instead of data, and without blower door numbers, system runtime data, aux heat status, duct leakage, and commissioning info, it's mostly guesswork no matter how experienced the commenter is.

Energy auditor, commenting on the New Hampshire thread

That is the most useful thing anyone said in any of these discussions, and it applies to this website too.

Should I switch it off while I am out?

In an effort to try to cut the electric bill, we do turn the split units OFF completely during the day when we are not around and then turn them back on when we return.

Homeowner, coastal Maine thread

About a dozen people told this household to stop, and they were right. Almost every one of them gave a reason that is wrong, which matters, because a wrong reason sends people to the wrong fix. The two most popular were that the heat pump has to reheat the thermal mass of the building, and an analogy about a leaking cup that takes many drips to fill and few to keep full.

Neither survives the physics. Heat loss through a wall is proportional to the temperature difference across it. Hold the house cooler for eight hours and it loses less heat during those eight hours, and the structure hands that stored warmth back to you as it cools rather than swallowing it. Over a day that begins and ends at 68F the thermal mass nets to zero, so the heat delivered equals the heat lost, and the heat lost was lower. A setback always reduces the amount of heat you have to deliver. On this house, at 8F for 8 hours, it saves 10.0 kWh of heat a day, worth 4.0 kWh of electricity at a steady coefficient of performance of 2.5.

The reason the advice is still right is that the question was never how much heat you deliver. It is what you pay per unit, and recovery is the expensive hour of the day. Reheating the structure creates no extra heat across the cycle, but it does force a large part of the day's delivery into a short window. What that window costs turns on one thing: whether your resistance strips come on during it.

The whole answer is in one table

Same house, same setback, same day. The only variable is what supplies the catch up. Thermal capacitance for light frame construction is usually put between 3 and 8 BTU per square foot per degree F, so all three are shown rather than one being chosen.

One commenter in the thread described the mechanism exactly, and was the only person there to get it right:

Mine kick in if the set temp is 3 or more degrees higher than indoor temps. So if I have it at 65 overnight and 70 during the day, it will use the resistive heaters until it gets to 67.

Commenter, coastal Maine thread

Another put a bound on it that matches the table: the savings are negligible for setbacks shorter than about eight hours. Those two comments are worth more than the ten repeating the thermal mass story.

What to actually do

• Find the droop or differential setting on your thermostat, the one deciding how far the room may fall below setpoint before backup heat is called. If it is 2F, any setback deeper than 2F fires the strips on recovery and you are in the left hand column. Widening it is free.
• If you have no resistance backup at all, which is true of most ductless systems including the two in this Maine house, a setback saves a small amount and there is no trap. Ductless owners keep being given advice written for ducted systems.
• Recover gradually rather than in one step. A thermostat that starts the climb early keeps the compressor at low speed, which is where its efficiency lives. Recovering in twenty minutes is what calls the strips.
• Do not set up at night. One household in these threads raised the setpoint from 66 to 69 at bedtime, combining the worst recovery efficiency of the day with the coldest outdoor temperature.

A worked case: 4,600 kWh in one month in coastal Maine

The household above is worth following through, because it is the clearest example on this site of a bill that the heat pumps cannot account for, and it can be shown two independent ways. [r/heatpumps, coastal Maine]

A 1996 house of about 1,600 square feet near Bar Harbor. Two Mitsubishi ductless units rated 12,000 and 15,000 BTU per hour, installed the previous May, plus a new heat pump water heater replacing a resistance tank. The previous heat was electric baseboard. Three adults, no electric vehicle, no unusual loads. February consumption: 4,600 kWh.

Route one: the equipment cannot draw that much

A commenter looked up the combined maximum electrical input for that pair of units and put it near 4,600 watts. Running both flat out, without stopping, for every hour of a 29 day month gives:

That is a ceiling no heat pump ever reaches, because it means a hundred percent duty cycle at maximum compressor speed for four straight weeks. The household used 4,600 kWh. At least 1,398 kWh came from something other than the heat pumps, and in practice a good deal more.

Route two: the implied efficiency is that of a toaster

Come at it from the house instead. Their neighbour in the same thread, in the same state, put a non-heating base load at 15 to 20 kWh a day, so allow 500 kWh for water heating, lighting, cooking and laundry. That leaves 4,100 kWh for heat. Now ask what heat the house needed, at the New England February degree day normal of 1,114:

A coefficient of performance below 1.0 is physically impossible, so the top row rules itself out and the house is not tight. Everything else lands between 1.0 and 1.5, against a rated seasonal figure nearer 2.5 to 3. Two routes, two methods, one conclusion: this household paid for two heat pumps and kept most of the efficiency of the electric baseboards they replaced. On the normalised table they sit at the bottom of every household collected so far.

What this household should check, cheapest first

• Whether the baseboards are still live. Nobody in eighty comments asked this, and it should have been the first question. If the original electric baseboards are still connected with their own thermostats set above 55F, then every day the heat pumps are switched off, the baseboards heat the house at a coefficient of performance of exactly 1.0 while the owner believes nothing is running. That one fact would account for the entire gap. It costs nothing to walk the house and read the dials.
• Stop switching them off. These are ductless units with no resistance strips, so by the table above this household sits in the column where holding a temperature is the cheaper habit, and the off and on pattern also invites the baseboards to take over.
• Clean the indoor filters and screens. Another person in the same thread watched consumption across three heat pumps double, assumed the equipment was failing, and found a year of dust on the head unit screens. Cleaning them halved it again. Fifteen minutes, no money.
• Look at where the water heater lives. A heat pump water heater in an unheated basement falls back on its resistance element in the cold, and when it does run properly it draws its heat from the surrounding air. In a basement the house is also heating, the space heating pays for the water heating twice.
• Call the utility. Two Maine residents in the thread named discounted heat pump rates on their own bills, one on Central Maine Power's seasonal heat pump rate and one pointing to the equivalent from Versant. Neither is applied automatically. This is the highest value phone call on the list.
• Then, and only then, pay for a blower door test. Air sealing is real, and it is last here because it is the only item that costs serious money, and because none of the arithmetic above needs the house to be leaky for the bill to make sense.

I rent, and this was done to me

This is the situation I found hardest to read and it is the least written about, so it gets the most space here.

My landlord installed new HVAC units in our building meant for heating and AC. The company and the landlord assured us they were energy efficient and would save us money... 12/20-1/20 $817. Con ed says our energy use this month was 2923kwh which seems astronomical.

Tenant, Queens, New York City

The apartment is roughly 1,150 square feet across three rooms, in a building from 1988, with two exterior walls and an unheated lobby. Central steam heat was removed and three ductless mini-splits were installed in its place.

What the numbers say

Normalised, this apartment runs at 2.24 watt hours per square foot per heating degree day. That is the worst figure in my entire dataset, ahead of the New Hampshire house that is heating mostly with resistance strips.

The equipment plates make it worse. Three units at their rated maximum, running continuously for thirty days, would draw 3,046 kWh. The tenant used 2,923. The machines were running at 96% of flat out, all month, and the apartment was still at 65 to 68 degrees.

The part that is not about heat pumps at all

Under the old central steam system, heat was included in the rent and the landlord paid for it. After the conversion, the tenants pay. The tenant states their lease says heat is included.

The conversion was encouraged by a utility rebate. Several people in the thread, including at least one landlord and one HVAC professional, made the same point: these programmes pay to remove central fossil heating and install in-unit electric, without requiring any assessment of the building envelope first.

They have to stop this program... requiring removing their current gas heating without considering the building current level of insulation. This is a perfect example of this program failure.

Landlord of a two family building, same thread

The economics from the landlord's side are straightforward. They receive a rebate, they stop paying for heat, and the tenants absorb a cost that did not exist for them before. Nothing about the building improved.

What I would actually do

• Read your lease before doing any arithmetic. If it says heat is included, the question is not whether the bill is reasonable. It is whether you should be receiving it at all. Someone in that thread noted that jurisdictions treat this differently and that it can be a rent overcharge. I am not qualified to tell you whether that is true where you live and you should ask someone who is.
• Talk to your neighbours. A single high bill is a system problem. A building of high bills is a building problem, and it is much harder for a landlord to dismiss.
• Get the equipment model numbers and the kilowatt hours. Not the dollar figure. The plate ratings on those units are what made this diagnosable at all.
• Check whether your utility has a heat pump tariff. One household in my dataset is on one at roughly $0.25 per kWh against a standard rate nearer $0.35. That is a 29% reduction for a phone call, and it appears in no state average.
• Ask your utility about minimum insulation requirements for electric heating. A commenter noted that at least one utility requires homes to meet insulation minimums before heating with electricity, buried deep in its service requirements. Whether that is enforceable in your situation is worth finding out.

I regret this

I completely regret getting a heat pump in New England. Welcome to the club.

Commenter, New Hampshire thread

Everyone who was told heat pumps would cost less to run were sold a bill of goods.

Commenter, same thread

I want to take this seriously rather than argue with it, because both statements are sometimes true and the reasons matter.

Where the regret is justified: switching from natural gas in a state with expensive electricity, on running cost alone, usually costs more. If somebody promised you savings on that switch without asking what you pay per kWh and per therm, they were guessing or selling. This site says so on every relevant page and it is why the state comparison exists.

Where it is misplaced: several of the most frustrated people in these threads had switched from electric resistance, oil or propane, where the arithmetic strongly favours a heat pump, and their disappointment traces to a system that is not running properly rather than to the technology. The New Hampshire household is the clearest case. Their machine can very likely do what they were promised. It is not being allowed to.

Where it is neither: a lot of anger in these threads is about electricity prices, which is a fair thing to be angry about and is not a fact about heat pumps. One household pays $0.193 per kWh; ten miles away across a state line, on the same grid, the figure is $0.097. The difference is whether the utility is municipal or investor owned.

The tips that actually recur

Filtering out the arguments, the same practical advice comes from the people who clearly know what they are talking about across every thread I read.

Free, do these first

• Check what a setback costs you before using one. It saves heat and can still cost electricity, because many thermostats fire the resistance strips during recovery. The arithmetic is above, and it swings both ways on a single setting.
• Check the filter and the outdoor unit. Both restrict capacity, which pushes load onto backup heat.
• Confirm you are not in emergency heat. Easy to leave on by accident.
• Find the compressor lockout setting in the installer menu. If it is near 35F on a modern unit, that is very likely your answer. Multiple people in these threads found exactly this, one describing changing it from 35F to minus 10F with immediate effect.

Cheap, high information

• A circuit level energy monitor on the air handler shows resistance strip runtime directly and removes all guesswork, including mine. Several householders in these threads use one.
• A blower door test, roughly $300, tells you what your air leakage actually is instead of what you believe it is.
• A phone call to your utility about a heat pump tariff.

Worth money

• A Manual J load calculation, around $300. Every site in the federal study that used one had low auxiliary heat use. [PNNL-37127 (2025)]
• Air sealing before insulation. Repeated by essentially everyone with building science background in these threads.
• Keeping an existing furnace as backup rather than resistance strips, where you already have one. See dual fuel.

How this was checked

Every quote here is from public discussion and is used to represent the concern rather than as evidence for a claim. I have attributed them to the thread and the poster's stated situation rather than by username, because the point is the pattern rather than any individual.

The numbers behind each answer come from the site's own dataset and model, and each links to the page where the working is shown. The Queens figures are computed from the tenant's reported consumption and the equipment plate ratings they posted, both of which are in the thread.

I have not verified any household's meter, equipment or lease.

What this page does not cover

Nothing here is legal advice, and the tenancy section deliberately stops at describing the pattern and pointing at people qualified to advise on it.

These threads are self-selected. People post when something has gone wrong or gone unusually well, and this page will over-represent both ends.

I cannot diagnose any specific system from a bill, and neither can anyone else in those threads, which is a large part of why the good advice in them is always some version of measure it rather than guess.

References

1. Homeowner report and follow-up discussion, r/heatpumps, February 2026. Southern New Hampshire, 1,400 sq ft ranch, Samsung R32 ducted two zone system. Twelve months of utility kWh readings, equipment details and thermostat setpoints are the homeowner's own, posted publicly in the thread.
2. Tenant report and follow-up discussion, r/heatpumps, January 2025. Queens, New York City, roughly 1,150 sq ft rental apartment in a 1988 building, three GREE ductless mini-splits installed by the landlord in place of central steam heat. Consumption, equipment plates, setpoints and lease terms are the tenant's own, posted publicly.
3. Homeowner report and follow-up discussion, r/heatpumps, January 2026. Southwest Indiana, 2,160 sq ft bi-level, 2-ton Daikin Fit ducted air source heat pump. Figures for design load, capacity, balance point, insulation levels and metered usage are the homeowner's own, given across the thread.
4. Homeowner discussion on normalising heat pump consumption, r/heatpumps, December 2022. Contains several householders reporting consumption in kilowatt hours per heating degree day, together with equipment and load calculation details.
5. Mendon, V., Keene, K., Rosenberg, S., Rotondo, J. A., Nwe, K., Young, J., Wind, W., and Goetzler, B. (2025). Performance Results from DOE Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge Field Validation. PNNL-37127. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. January 2025.
6. Winkler, J. and Ramaraj, S. (2023). Field Validation of Air-Source Heat Pumps for Cold Climates. NREL/TP-5500-84745. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. May 2023.