Heat Pump Payback in Portsmouth, OH
Is a heat pump worth it in Portsmouth?
Portsmouth technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $5,500 is what Portsmouth would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Lower bills claw that back: about $32 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 173.3 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Portsmouth.
Compare against another city
Landed on Portsmouth by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Portsmouth's weather, in the numbers that matter
3696 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Portsmouth has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1158 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 8.1°F here (coldest 2024 reading 1.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.89 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Portsmouth, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Ashland Regional, 17.8 miles from Portsmouth.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,238 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $778 a year. That compares with roughly 38 Mcf a year of gas at Portsmouth's $13.85 per-Mcf rate, about $809 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 18.40¢/kWh. 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 $5,024 behind.
What would change Portsmouth's answer
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Portsmouth if electricity rose past 19.6¢/kWh from 18.40¢, or gas fell under $13.03 per Mcf from $13.85. A useful quote test for Portsmouth: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $320 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $224.
Electric resistance heat in Portsmouth, compared
Gas isn't universal in Portsmouth, many houses run on electric heat already. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,221 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.2 years.
Portsmouth against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Portsmouth's winter puts it at rank 1685 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2140 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Portsmouth
Portsmouth, Ohio is home to about 17,489 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 Portsmouth, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Portsmouth's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Portsmouth's 2.89 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a 8.1°F design temperature, Portsmouth sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.