Will a heat pump pay off in Aberdeen, WA?
This one's marginal in Aberdeen: it only clears if you stay long enough. 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. Aberdeen's residents would see roughly $358 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 9.8 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Aberdeen's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Aberdeen actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Aberdeen racks up 5112 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, with 20 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 19.9°F, against a record low of 1.4°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.18 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Aberdeen 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. Source: NOAA station BOWERMAN AIRPORT, 5.6 miles from Aberdeen — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,071 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $583 a year. That compares with roughly 53 Mcf a year of gas at Aberdeen's 17.62 per-Mcf rate — about $942 a year — against a local electricity rate of 14.27¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 37.7 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,877 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Aberdeen has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,268 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.3 years.
How Aberdeen compares nationally
Aberdeen lands at position 595 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2189 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Aberdeen, WA
Aberdeen, Washington is home to about 17,044 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Aberdeen, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Aberdeen's 3.18 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 19.9°F design temperature, Aberdeen sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.