Should Elizabethtown switch to a heat pump?
The payback math works in Elizabethtown on paper, past the equipment's own working life. 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). Lower bills claw that back: about $149 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 23.5 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Elizabethtown.
Elizabethtown's weather, in the numbers that matter
3742 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Elizabethtown has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1192 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 5.5°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -3.3°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.83 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Elizabethtown — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station ADDINGTON FLD, 2.8 miles from Elizabethtown — the closest one on record.
Elizabethtown's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,348 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $628 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 39 Mcf a year of gas at Elizabethtown's 14.23 per-Mcf rate — about $777 a year — against a local electricity rate of 14.39¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 90.7 years, for a 15-year net position $1,268 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Elizabethtown, compared
Not every home in Elizabethtown has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Elizabethtown's answer improves. The saving here runs about $958 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.4 years.
Where Elizabethtown ranks in this dataset
Elizabethtown lands at position 1654 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1189 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Elizabethtown
Elizabethtown, Kentucky is home to about 34,565 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 Elizabethtown, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Where Elizabethtown's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Elizabethtown's 2.83 seasonal COP and payback figure. Elizabethtown's 5.5°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.