Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Moses Lake, WA
Moses Lake sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. $3,500 is what Moses Lake 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. Lower bills claw that back: about $325 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 10.8 years. Whether that's worth it in Moses Lake depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
Why Moses Lake's climate drives this number
Moses Lake has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5289 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 984 cooling degree days. 0°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -5.1°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.7 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Moses Lake sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station GRANT COUNTY INTL AIRPORT, 5.9 miles from Moses Lake — the closest one on record.
Moses Lake's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,960 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $828 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 55 Mcf a year of gas at Moses Lake's 17.62 per-Mcf rate — about $1,153 a year — against a local electricity rate of 14.27¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 41.5 years, for a 15-year net position $1,375 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Moses Lake — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,266 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 6.3 years.
Where Moses Lake ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Moses Lake comes in at 491 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1480 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Moses Lake, WA
About 26,969 people live in Moses Lake, Washington, 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 Moses Lake's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Moses Lake's 2.7 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Moses Lake's 0°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.