Heat Pump Payback in Redmond, OR
Is a heat pump worth it in Redmond?
Redmond technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $5,500 is what Redmond would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Lower bills claw that back: about $241 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 22.8 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Redmond.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Redmond. Look one up here.
How cold Redmond actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Redmond racks up 5741 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 635 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 1.9°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -2.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.75 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Redmond, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from Roberts Field Airport, the closest NOAA station, 2.2 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Redmond
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,286 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $882 a year. Redmond's gas rate of $16.71 per Mcf, applied to the 60 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $1,124 a year, against 15.14¢ 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 $1,879 behind.
How sensitive Redmond's result is to prices
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Redmond if electricity rose past 20.0¢/kWh from 15.14¢, or gas fell under $12.67 per Mcf from $16.71. A useful quote test for Redmond: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $2,410 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $1,687.
Electric resistance heat in Redmond, compared
Gas isn't universal in Redmond, 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 $1,443 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 6.9 years.
How Redmond compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Redmond's winter puts it at rank 300 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1106 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 Redmond, OR
Redmond, Oregon is home to about 37,626 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 Redmond, 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 Redmond's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Redmond's 2.75 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 1.9°F design temperature, Redmond sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.