Should Richmond switch to a heat pump?
In Richmond, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). The heat pump would cost about $91 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Richmond's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Richmond's payback figure
Richmond has a real but manageable winter — 4586 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 951 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 3.2°F, against a record low of -4°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.78 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Richmond sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, DARKE COUNTY AIRPORT, 32 miles from Richmond.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,177 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $849 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 48 Mcf a year at 11.49 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $759 a year (electricity here runs 17.03¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $4,862 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Richmond has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Richmond's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,338 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6 years.
Where Richmond ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Richmond comes in at 1108 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1154 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 35,561 people in Richmond
About 35,561 people live in Richmond, 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.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Richmond's 2.78 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Richmond's 3.2°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.