Heat Pump Payback in Goshen, IN
Goshen, IN: the heat pump payback math
Goshen is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Running costs here land $152 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Goshen's numbers say wait.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Goshen. Look one up here.
Why Goshen's climate drives this number
Goshen has a real but manageable winter, 4329 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 707 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -5.1°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -9.4°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.58 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Goshen, 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, Goshen Municipal Airport, 3.7 miles from Goshen.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,249 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $826 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 45 Mcf a year at $11.49 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $674 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 17.03¢/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 $7,782 behind.
The break-even point in Goshen
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Goshen if electricity fell to 13.2¢/kWh (from 17.03¢) or gas rose above $14.86 per Mcf (from $11.49). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Goshen, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Goshen has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Goshen's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,197 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.4 years.
Goshen against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Goshen comes in at 1303 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1193 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Goshen
About 34,458 people live in Goshen, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page, the 2.58 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Goshen's -5.1°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.