Heat Pump Payback in Auburn, IN
Will a heat pump pay off in Auburn, IN?
In Auburn, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Running costs here land $128 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Auburn's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Auburn. Look one up here.
Auburn's weather, in the numbers that matter
Auburn has a real but manageable winter, 4861 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 963 cooling degree days. -0.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -6°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.68 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Auburn sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Fort Wayne International Airp, 28.5 miles from Auburn.
The yearly running costs in Auburn
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,593 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $922 a year. That compares with roughly 51 Mcf a year of gas at Auburn's $11.49 per-Mcf rate, about $794 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 17.03¢/kWh. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $7,416 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
How sensitive Auburn's result is to prices
For the verdict in Auburn to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 14.0¢/kWh from 17.03¢, or gas climb past $14.01 per Mcf from $11.49. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in Auburn; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
Electric resistance heat in Auburn, compared
Plenty of homes in Auburn heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Auburn's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,387 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 7.2 years.
Auburn against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Auburn comes in at 892 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2512 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in Auburn
Auburn, Indiana is home to about 13,989 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 Auburn, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Auburn's 2.68 seasonal COP and payback figure. Auburn's -0.9°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.