Is a heat pump worth it in Greensburg?
Here in Greensburg, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Greensburg 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. Running costs here land $6 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Greensburg's numbers say wait.
Why Greensburg's climate drives this number
4504 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Greensburg has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 988 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. 10.4°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 3.2°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.95 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Greensburg sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, ARNOLD PALMER REGIONAL APT, 7.9 miles from Greensburg.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,866 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $977 a year. Greensburg's gas rate of 15.04 per Mcf, applied to the 47 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $971 a year, against 20.75¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $3,587 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Greensburg, compared
Not every home in Greensburg has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,655 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.8 years.
How Greensburg compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Greensburg comes in at 1195 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2435 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 14,586 people in Greensburg
About 14,586 people live in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, 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 2.95 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Greensburg's 10.4°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.