Heat Pump Payback in Centennial, CO
Is a heat pump worth it in Centennial?
Centennial is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. The heat pump would cost about $199 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Centennial's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
Centennial is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Why Centennial's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Centennial racks up 5280 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 919 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -8°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -9.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.51 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Centennial sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Centennial Airport, 1.6 miles from Centennial.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,327 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,010 a year. That compares with roughly 55 Mcf a year of gas at Centennial's $11.17 per-Mcf rate, about $811 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 16.53¢/kWh. With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $8,483 behind.
How sensitive Centennial's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Centennial if electricity fell to 12.5¢/kWh (from 16.53¢) or gas rose above $14.79 per Mcf (from $11.17). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Centennial, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Centennial, many houses run on electric heat already. 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 $1,397 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 7.2 years.
Centennial against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Centennial's winter puts it at rank 508 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 298 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. 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 Centennial
About 108,853 people live in Centennial, Colorado, 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
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Centennial's 2.51 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Centennial's -8°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.