Heat Pump Payback in Chubbuck, ID
Chubbuck, ID: the heat pump payback math
In Chubbuck, 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 $5,500 more up front here. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $187 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Chubbuck's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Chubbuck. Look one up here.
How cold Chubbuck actually gets
Chubbuck has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 6470 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 638 cooling degree days. 3°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -14.1°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.77 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Chubbuck 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Pocatello Regional Airport, 5.7 miles from Chubbuck.
Chubbuck's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,914 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $809 a year. Chubbuck's gas rate of $7.69 per Mcf, applied to the 67 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $622 a year, against 12.52¢ per kWh for electricity. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $8,303 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
How sensitive Chubbuck's result is to prices
For the verdict in Chubbuck to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 9.2¢/kWh from 12.52¢, or gas climb past $10.46 per Mcf from $7.69. 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 Chubbuck; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
Electric resistance heat in Chubbuck, compared
Not every home in Chubbuck has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. Switching saves about $1,346 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 7.4 years.
Chubbuck against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Chubbuck's winter puts it at rank 94 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2235 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.
Next step if you live in Chubbuck
Chubbuck, Idaho is home to about 16,577 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 Chubbuck, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Chubbuck's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Chubbuck's 2.77 seasonal COP and payback figure. Chubbuck's 3°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.