Heat Pump Payback in Fishers, IN
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Fishers, IN
Fishers is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. The heat pump would cost about $180 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Fishers's numbers say wait.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Fishers. Look one up here.
The climate behind Fishers's payback figure
Fishers has a real but manageable winter, 4894 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 779 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -5.8°F here (coldest 2024 reading -7.8°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.56 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Fishers sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from Indianapolis Executive Airpor, the closest NOAA station, 15.7 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,841 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $937 a year on electricity. Fishers's gas rate of $11.49 per Mcf, applied to the 51 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $758 a year, against 17.03¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $8,199 behind.
What would change Fishers's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Fishers if electricity fell to 13.0¢/kWh (from 17.03¢) or gas rose above $15.02 per Mcf (from $11.49). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Fishers, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Fishers, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Fishers's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,345 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 7.4 years.
How Fishers compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Fishers comes in at 862 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 316 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 Fishers
About 103,986 people live in Fishers, Indiana, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 2.56 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Fishers's -5.8°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.