Is a heat pump worth it in Brookings?

Here in Brookings, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. 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). Running costs here land $339 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Brookings's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Brookings's payback figure

7012 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Brookings has one of the harshest winters in the country; the cooling side runs to 537 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -17°F, against a record low of -23.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.3 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Brookings 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. Source: NOAA station BROOKINGS MUNICIPAL ARPT, 0.7 miles from Brookings — 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 7,720 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,157 a year. Brookings's gas rate of 9.86 per Mcf, applied to the 73 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $819 a year, against 14.15¢ 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 $8,579 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Brookings, compared

Plenty of homes in Brookings heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. About $1,454 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.5-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.

Brookings against the rest of the country

Brookings lands at position 47 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1635 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.

Deciding what's next in Brookings, SD

About 24,555 people live in Brookings, South Dakota, 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.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Reading further on this page's numbers

Every constant behind this page — the 2.3 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a -17°F design temperature, Brookings sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.