Should Sheridan switch to a heat pump?

In Sheridan, 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). Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $146 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Sheridan's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Sheridan's weather, in the numbers that matter

Degree days tell the story here: Sheridan racks up 6611 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 654 cooling degree days on the cooling side. -20°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -31°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.3 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Sheridan — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station SHERIDAN COUNTY AIRPORT, 1.9 miles from Sheridan — the closest one on record.

Sheridan's running-cost comparison, in dollars

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 7,278 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,070 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 69 Mcf a year at 11.74 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $924 a year (electricity here runs 13.66¢/kWh). Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $5,694 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Sheridan, compared

Gas isn't universal in Sheridan — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Sheridan's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,332 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6 years.

Where Sheridan ranks in this dataset

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Sheridan comes in at 80 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1941 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Sheridan, WY

Sheridan, Wyoming is home to about 19,813 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 Sheridan, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.

More on how this number was built

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Sheridan's 2.3 seasonal COP and payback figure. Sheridan's -20°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.