Heat Pump Payback in Roseville, MN
Should Roseville switch to a heat pump?
Here in Roseville, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $184 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Roseville's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Compare against another city
Roseville is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Roseville's weather, in the numbers that matter
Roseville has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 5994 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 749 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -5.1°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -8°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.58 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Roseville needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. These numbers come from St Paul Dwtwn Holman Fd AP, the closest NOAA station, 7.5 miles out.
Roseville's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 5,883 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,022 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 62 Mcf a year at $10.98 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $838 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 15.67¢/kWh). Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $8,265 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
How sensitive Roseville's result is to prices
For the verdict in Roseville to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 12.3¢/kWh from 15.67¢, or gas climb past $13.93 per Mcf from $10.98. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in Roseville; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
Electric resistance heat in Roseville, compared
Not every home in Roseville has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Roseville's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,509 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 6.6 years.
How Roseville compares nationally
Roseville lands at position 233 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1151 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in Roseville
Roseville, Minnesota is home to about 35,637 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 Roseville, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Roseville's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page, the 2.58 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Roseville's -5.1°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.