Should Aurora switch to a heat pump?
In Aurora, 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). The heat pump would cost about $50 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Aurora's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Aurora's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Aurora racks up 5312 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 563 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 7°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 1.4°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.87 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Aurora — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from PORTAGE COUNTY AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 7.2 miles out.
Aurora's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,687 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $951 a year. Aurora's gas rate of 13.85 per Mcf, applied to the 55 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $900 a year, against 18.40¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $4,253 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Aurora has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Aurora's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,659 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 4.8 years.
Aurora against the rest of the country
Aurora lands at position 476 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2101 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 17,985 people in Aurora
About 17,985 people live in Aurora, Ohio, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Where Aurora's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page — the 2.87 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Aurora's 7°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.