Heat Pump Payback in Faribault, MN
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Faribault, MN
In Faribault, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $246 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Faribault's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
Faribault is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Why Faribault's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Faribault racks up 6203 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 591 cooling degree days on the cooling side. -9.4°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -14.8°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.47 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Faribault, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Faribault Municipal Airport, 3 miles from Faribault.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 6,359 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,075 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 65 Mcf a year at $10.98 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $829 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 15.67¢/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 $9,191 behind.
What would change Faribault's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Faribault if electricity fell to 11.6¢/kWh (from 15.67¢) or gas rose above $14.79 per Mcf (from $10.98). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Faribault, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Faribault, 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. Switching saves about $1,506 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 6.6 years.
Where Faribault ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Faribault's winter puts it at rank 160 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1607 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.
Deciding what's next in Faribault, MN
About 24,983 people live in Faribault, Minnesota, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Faribault's 2.47 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Faribault's -9.4°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.