Is a heat pump worth it in Portage?

Here in Portage, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Portage 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. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $109 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Portage's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Portage's payback figure

Degree days tell the story here: Portage racks up 4617 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 859 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 1.6°F here (record low -7.2°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.74 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Portage sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station BURNS HARBOR, 4.5 miles from Portage — the closest one on record.

Portage's running-cost comparison, in dollars

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,267 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $851 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 48 Mcf a year of gas at Portage's 11.49 per-Mcf rate — about $742 a year — against a local electricity rate of 17.03¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $5,139 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Portage, compared

Not every home in Portage has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,329 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6 years.

Portage against the rest of the country

Portage lands at position 1070 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1073 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

What to do with this number in Portage

About 38,576 people live in Portage, Indiana, 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 Portage's figure comes from

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Portage's 2.74 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Portage's 1.6°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.