Heat Pump Payback in Easton, PA
Should Easton switch to a heat pump?
Here in Easton, 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 $5,500 more up front here. Running costs here land $36 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Easton's numbers say wait.
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The climate behind Easton's payback figure
4777 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Easton has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 985 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 7°F here (coldest 2024 reading 1°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.87 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Easton, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station Lehigh Valley International A, 12.3 miles from Easton, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Easton
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,215 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,049 a year. That compares with roughly 50 Mcf a year of gas at Easton's $15.04 per-Mcf rate, about $1,013 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 20.75¢/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 $6,035 behind.
How sensitive Easton's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Easton if electricity fell to 19.8¢/kWh (from 20.75¢) or gas rose above $15.76 per Mcf (from $15.04). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Easton, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Easton, compared
Plenty of homes in Easton heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,726 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.8 years.
How Easton compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Easton comes in at 970 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1344 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in Easton
About 30,432 people live in Easton, Pennsylvania, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Easton's 2.87 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Easton's 7°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.