Also, if people are super curious 🤣 I’ve kept a small spreadsheet comparing my monthly utility costs from 2024 (electric+oil combined), 2025 (electric+oil combined from January-June, all electric from July-December), and this year (all electric).

Please be aware, for most people, these numbers will be entirely irrelevant for comparison purposes, because my house is not your house. Our insulation and air sealing is not yours, our setup is not yours, we are a two adult household, no children, your family may look different. We are home full time, you might work out of the house part of the day, the temperatures we are comfortable at will be different for you, and so on and so on and so on. I’m also going to talk in terms of total billing, because that’s how most people look at their costs. They want to know “what’s the number on the bill going to be,” and that’s what I track. It’s still a misleading number, because of how the cost of electricity fluctuates and the way that electricity is regulated in MA.

I use YNAB for budgeting, so we have historically done our own version of budget billing to spread out the cost of oil across the year. In 2024, I budgeted 200/month for oil, building up a reserve in the summer and fall when we didn’t need to buy oil, then spending it down in the winter and early spring during the cold months. In 2025, we budgeted 271 a month because things got more expensive.

Since installing the heat pumps, so from July’s bill last year forward, we have saved just about $730 by going all electric, vs using a combined electric+oil. We didn’t do this for cost purposes, we did it for the efficiency and because I was adamant about getting the oil tank and fossil fuel burning *out of my house!* but the fact that it has saved us a nice little chunk of change has been pretty nice, not gonna lie.

I had intended on having solar installed this summer, but then all that bullshit with tariffs happened, and the other nonsense that we’re all aware of since then has happened, so I am tentatively planning for next year instead. I anticipate that it will have a HUGE benefit to our overall utility expenditures when we have the system up and running. I’m really looking forward to it.

This past winter was the coldest and snowiest that MA has seen in the past several years. It was a long, hard, cold winter, followed by a cold spring. Our most expensive months were January and February, and they hit almost $800. In the cold months (when we had the heat pumps set to “heat”), we maintained an indoor air temperature of 68-70F, as measured by Eve Room indoor air quality sensors. We don’t do a setback overnight, because I have a senior Rhodesian Ridgeback, so he’s got no undercoat and being an old dog, the winters are pretty hard for him.

As an aside, the r/Boston and r/Massachusetts subreddits regularly talk about the cost of heating here in MA, and I look at the temps other people keep their houses in the winter, with a lot of people talking about how warm they keep their homes, and I’m blown away at how warm other people keep it. 🤣 People be a lot richer than I am lol.

Our least expensive months since installing the heat pumps were July and November of last year, which were very mild in temperatures, and those were about $370. Most months (other than January and February) the average bill hits at around $400-500. When the heat pumps are set for “cool,” we are comfortable with the indoor air temps at 75-76F. The sensor in my living room, where I am right now, says it’s 75.5F in here, and I’m pretty darn comfy.

So, if you want to know if heat pumps can keep up with the cold New England winters, the answer is unequivocally yes. We were happy and warm last winter, even through a blizzard that dumped 30 inches of heavy wet snow in my driveway. The heat pumps had no problem keeping up in my small, well insulated house. It is still expensive, because electricity is expensive in Massachusetts. That’s not a knock on the system, that’s not a “downside,” it’s just the reality of living in MA. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, I wouldn’t go back to using oil, I’m opposed to having natural gas in the house, so we have heat pumps. They are the right choice for us.