Should Anderson switch to a heat pump?
In Anderson, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Anderson 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. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $125 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Anderson's numbers say wait.
Why Anderson's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Anderson racks up 4764 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 838 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 0.5°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -5.8°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.71 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Anderson 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, ANRSN MUNI DRNGTON FLD AP, 4.3 miles from Anderson.
The month-to-month numbers for Anderson
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,451 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $880 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 50 Mcf a year at 11.49 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $755 a year (electricity here runs 17.03¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $5,371 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Anderson, compared
Plenty of homes in Anderson heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,360 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.9 years.
How Anderson compares nationally
Anderson lands at position 975 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 735 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.
Next step for 55,851 people in Anderson
About 55,851 people live in Anderson, Indiana, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here — the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Anderson's 2.71 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Anderson's 0.5°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.