Heat Pump Payback in Hermitage, PA
Should Hermitage switch to a heat pump?
In Hermitage, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $5,500 is what Hermitage would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. The heat pump would cost about $97 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Hermitage's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
Landed on Hermitage by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
The climate behind Hermitage's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Hermitage racks up 5003 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 740 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 3°F here (coldest 2024 reading 0°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.77 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Hermitage needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Source: NOAA station Youngstown-Warren Regional Ai, 12.1 miles from Hermitage, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Hermitage
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,573 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,080 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 52 Mcf a year at $15.04 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $983 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 20.75¢/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 $6,959 behind.
How sensitive Hermitage's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Hermitage if electricity fell to 18.5¢/kWh (from 20.75¢) or gas rose above $16.91 per Mcf (from $15.04). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Hermitage, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Hermitage has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hermitage's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,748 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.7 years.
Where Hermitage ranks in this dataset
Hermitage lands at position 688 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2313 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
What to do with this number in Hermitage
About 15,839 people live in Hermitage, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Hermitage's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Hermitage's 2.77 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 3°F design temperature, Hermitage sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.