Heat Pump Payback in Laramie, WY
Should Laramie switch to a heat pump?
Here in Laramie, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. The heat pump would cost about $179 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces, a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Laramie's numbers say wait.
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The climate behind Laramie's payback figure
Laramie has one of the harshest winters in the country, 7125 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, at 274 cooling degree days. -16.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -26°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.31 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Laramie sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from Laramie Regional Airport, the closest NOAA station, 4 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Laramie
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 7,810 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,099 a year. Laramie's gas rate of $11.74 per Mcf, applied to the 74 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $920 a year, against 13.66¢ 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 $8,187 behind.
The break-even point in Laramie
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Laramie if electricity fell to 11.3¢/kWh (from 13.66¢) or gas rose above $14.15 per Mcf (from $11.74). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Laramie, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Laramie, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Laramie's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,414 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 7.1 years.
How Laramie compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Laramie's winter puts it at rank 41 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1249 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in Laramie
About 32,957 people live in Laramie, Wyoming, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 2.31 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. At a -16.1°F design temperature, Laramie sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.