Heat Pump Payback in Port Townsend, WA
Should Port Townsend switch to a heat pump?
This one's marginal in Port Townsend: it only clears if you stay long enough. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,000. Port Townsend's residents would see roughly $304 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 9.9 years. It's a genuine toss-up here, Port Townsend's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Compare against another city
Port Townsend is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Port Townsend's weather, in the numbers that matter
Degree days tell the story here: Port Townsend racks up 4741 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, with 16 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 27.5°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was 16°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.02 for the recommended standard unit. Port Townsend's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. Source: NOAA station Port Townsend, 1.5 miles from Port Townsend, the closest one on record.
Port Townsend's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,975 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $569 a year. Port Townsend's gas rate of $17.62 per Mcf, applied to the 49 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $873 a year, against 14.27¢ per kWh for electricity. Buying outright rather than at replacement time stretches payback to longer than the 15-year equipment life. Over 15 years, compared with a like-for-like replacement, the heat pump leaves you $1,556 ahead.
How sensitive Port Townsend's result is to prices
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Port Townsend if electricity rose past 21.9¢/kWh from 14.27¢, or gas fell under $11.47 per Mcf from $17.62. A useful quote test for Port Townsend: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,040 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,128.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Port Townsend heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,147 a year, which recovers the extra $7,500 spent going electric in roughly 6.5 years.
Where Port Townsend ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Port Townsend's winter puts it at rank 995 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 3057 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.
Deciding what's next in Port Townsend, WA
Port Townsend, Washington is home to about 10,649 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 Port Townsend, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 3.02 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Homes in Port Townsend without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.