PSE&G Long Island is committed to achieving 1 TBTU of residential and commercial heat pump savings by 2025, in line with New York’s ambitious decarbonization goals. These fuel-neutral savings goals require new programs and revamping existing programs to greatly accelerate the heat pump market on Long Island. We recently completed a first-of-its-kind study to characterize the market and potential savings from heat pump technologies.

We identified and measured key market barriers and metrics to establish a baseline and project market adoption through 2040 including pricing, number of installed technologies, propensity to adopt, workforce business practices, and segmentation. The study benchmarked current business practices regarding the sale and sizing of heat pump technologies: what types of systems are commonly replaced with heat pumps, heat pump sizing practices, and the drivers of customer decisions to switch to a heat pump.

PSE&G Long Island is now using the study findings to design heat pump technology programs. The results of this study provided PSE&G Long Island with the information to assess what is truly needed to meet its fuel-neutral savings targets and subsequently design and deliver cost-effective programs to achieve them. We provided specific insight about how and why key market actors—contractors and distributors—are supporting heat pump sales and adoption within and outside of PSE&G Long Island’s existing programs. Among other findings, we identified opportunities for PSE&G Long Island to scale its heat pump water heater rebates through new, targeted industry engagement, and confirmed the market’s readiness for PSE&G Long Island’s recent program redesign which re-frames mini-splits and ducted air source heat pumps as a heating—rather than a cooling—solution.