Heat Pump Payback in Colorado Springs, CO
Is a heat pump worth it in Colorado Springs?
Colorado Springs is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $5,500 is what Colorado Springs would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. The heat pump would cost about $142 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. That's Colorado Springs's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Not the city you meant?
Colorado Springs is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Colorado Springs's weather, in the numbers that matter
5303 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Colorado Springs has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 773 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. 1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -9.9°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.72 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Colorado Springs, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station City Of Colorado Springs Municipal, 5.6 miles from Colorado Springs, 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 4,937 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $925 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 55 Mcf a year at $11.17 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $783 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 16.53¢/kWh). Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $7,637 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
What would change Colorado Springs's answer
For the verdict in Colorado Springs to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 13.4¢/kWh from 16.53¢, or gas climb past $13.75 per Mcf from $11.17. 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 Colorado Springs; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Colorado Springs, 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 $1,460 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.8 years.
Colorado Springs against the rest of the country
Colorado Springs lands at position 482 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 40 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 if you live in Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs, Colorado is home to about 493,554 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 Colorado Springs, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Colorado Springs's 2.72 seasonal COP and payback figure. Colorado Springs's 1°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.