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 $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). 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.

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, against a record low of -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 — against a local electricity rate of 16.53¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $6,483 behind.

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 $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.7 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.