Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Alexandria, MN

In Alexandria, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $331 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Alexandria's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Alexandria's weather, in the numbers that matter

7234 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Alexandria has one of the harshest winters in the country; the cooling side runs to 474 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. -11.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -17°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.41 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Alexandria 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 CHANDLER FIELD AIRPORT, 1 miles from Alexandria — the closest one on record.

Alexandria's running-cost comparison, in dollars

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 7,601 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,254 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 75 Mcf a year at 10.98 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $923 a year (electricity here runs 15.67¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $8,463 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Alexandria, compared

Gas isn't universal in Alexandria — many houses run on electric heat already. 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 $1,712 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.7 years.

Where Alexandria ranks in this dataset

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Alexandria comes in at 38 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2401 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Alexandria, MN

Alexandria, Minnesota is home to about 14,914 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 Alexandria, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Reading further on this page's numbers

Every constant behind this page — the 2.41 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Alexandria's -11.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.