Heat Pump Payback in Frankfort, KY
Should Frankfort switch to a heat pump?
Frankfort technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Lower bills claw that back: about $173 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 31.8 years. Frankfort's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Compare against another city
Landed on Frankfort by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Why Frankfort's climate drives this number
Frankfort has a real but manageable winter, 3672 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1441 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 8.1°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -6°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.89 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Frankfort sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from Capital City Airport, the closest NOAA station, 2.1 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Frankfort
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,217 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $640 a year on electricity. Frankfort's gas rate of $14.23 per Mcf, applied to the 38 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $813 a year, against 14.39¢ per kWh for electricity. Buying outright rather than at replacement time stretches payback to longer than the 15-year equipment life. Over 15 years, compared with a like-for-like replacement, the heat pump leaves you $2,903 behind.
The break-even point in Frankfort
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 21.1¢/kWh (it is 14.39¢ now) or gas drops below $9.70 per Mcf (now $14.23); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Frankfort. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $173 a year saved, a difference under $1,211 pays back within 7 years here, and under $1,730 within 10.
Electric resistance heat in Frankfort, compared
Plenty of homes in Frankfort heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Frankfort's answer improves. About $967 a year comes back this way, enough that the 10.3-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Frankfort ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Frankfort's winter puts it at rank 1702 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1401 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Frankfort
About 28,610 people live in Frankfort, Kentucky, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Frankfort's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page, the 2.89 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Frankfort's 8.1°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.