Elyria, OH: the heat pump payback math
Here in Elyria, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Elyria would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. The heat pump would cost about $25 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Elyria's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Elyria's payback figure
4805 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Elyria has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 927 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. 5°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 1.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.82 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Elyria sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station LORAIN COUNTY RGNL AIRPORT, 4.5 miles from Elyria — the closest one on record.
Elyria's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,315 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $939 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 50 Mcf a year at 13.85 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $914 a year (electricity here runs 18.40¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $3,877 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Elyria has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. About $1,520 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.3-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Elyria against the rest of the country
Elyria lands at position 949 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 758 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 for 53,604 people in Elyria
About 53,604 people live in Elyria, Ohio, 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.
Where Elyria's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Elyria's 2.82 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Elyria's 5°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.