Will a heat pump pay off in Lorain, OH?

Lorain is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $25 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Lorain's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Lorain's weather, in the numbers that matter

4805 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Lorain has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 927 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 5°F, against a record low of 1.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.82 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Lorain 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. These numbers come from LORAIN COUNTY RGNL AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 6.4 miles out.

The month-to-month numbers for Lorain

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,315 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $939 a year. That compares with roughly 50 Mcf a year of gas at Lorain's 13.85 per-Mcf rate — about $914 a year — against a local electricity rate of 18.40¢/kWh. 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 $3,877 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Lorain, compared

Plenty of homes in Lorain heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Lorain's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,520 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.3 years.

How Lorain compares nationally

Lorain lands at position 948 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 601 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.

Next step for 65,751 people in Lorain

Lorain, Ohio is home to about 65,751 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Lorain, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

Where Lorain's figure comes from

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Lorain's 2.82 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 5°F design temperature, Lorain sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.