Is a heat pump worth it in Anacortes?
This one's marginal in Anacortes: it only clears if you stay long enough. $3,500 is what Anacortes would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Lower bills claw that back: about $334 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 10.5 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Anacortes's numbers don't point clearly either way.
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 (record low 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 its running cost near $915 a year, against 14.27¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 40.5 years, for a 15-year net position $1,506 ahead.
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 $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.6 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.