Heat Pump Payback in Anacortes, WA
Is a heat pump worth it in Anacortes?
The payback math works in Anacortes on paper, past the equipment's own working life. $5,500 is what Anacortes would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Lower bills claw that back: about $334 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 16.5 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Anacortes.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Anacortes. Look one up here.
How cold Anacortes actually gets
Anacortes has a real but manageable winter, 4971 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, at 15 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 16.5°F here (coldest 2024 reading 10.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.1 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Anacortes, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station Padilla Bay Reserve, 7.3 miles from Anacortes, 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 4,060 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $581 a year. Anacortes's gas rate of $17.62 per Mcf, applied to the 52 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $915 a year, against 14.27¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase, with a working furnace ripped out early, payback would take longer than the 15-year equipment life. Measured against the like-for-like replacement instead, a household here ends 15 years $494 behind.
How sensitive Anacortes's result is to prices
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Anacortes if electricity rose past 22.5¢/kWh from 14.27¢, or gas fell under $11.17 per Mcf from $17.62. A useful quote test for Anacortes: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,340 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,338.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Anacortes 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 $1,218 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.2 years.
How Anacortes compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Anacortes comes in at 774 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2078 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
What to do with this number in Anacortes
Anacortes, Washington is home to about 18,148 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 Anacortes, 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
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Anacortes's 3.1 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Anacortes's 16.5°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here, see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.