Heat Pump Payback in Moscow, ID
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Moscow, ID
In Moscow, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Running costs here land $285 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Moscow's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
Moscow is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Why Moscow's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Moscow racks up 6235 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 459 cooling degree days on the cooling side. -11°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -20.9°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.44 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Moscow sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station Pullman/Moscow Regional Airport, 5.3 miles from Moscow, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Moscow
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 6,470 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $859 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 65 Mcf a year at $7.69 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $574 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 12.52¢/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 $9,779 behind.
The break-even point in Moscow
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Moscow if electricity fell to 8.0¢/kWh (from 12.52¢) or gas rose above $12.08 per Mcf (from $7.69). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Moscow, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Moscow 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. Switching saves about $1,192 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 8.4 years.
Where Moscow ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Moscow's winter puts it at rank 143 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1485 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.
What to do with this number in Moscow
About 26,894 people live in Moscow, Idaho, 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
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Moscow's 2.44 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a -11°F design temperature, Moscow sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.