Heat Pump Payback in Sioux Falls, SD
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Sioux Falls, SD
In Sioux Falls, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Running costs here land $263 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Sioux Falls's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Compare against another city
Landed on Sioux Falls by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
How cold Sioux Falls actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Sioux Falls racks up 6045 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 852 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 -16.1°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -18.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.31 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Sioux Falls 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 Joe Foss Field Airport, the closest NOAA station, 2.8 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 6,626 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,040 a year. Sioux Falls's gas rate of $9.86 per Mcf, applied to the 63 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $777 a year, against 14.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $9,451 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
How sensitive Sioux Falls's result is to prices
For the verdict in Sioux Falls to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 9.9¢/kWh from 14.15¢, or gas climb past $14.04 per Mcf from $9.86. 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 Sioux Falls; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
Electric resistance heat in Sioux Falls, compared
Not every home in Sioux Falls has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,282 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 7.8 years.
How Sioux Falls compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Sioux Falls's winter puts it at rank 199 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 117 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.
What to do with this number in Sioux Falls
Sioux Falls, South Dakota is home to about 209,289 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 Sioux Falls, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page, the 2.31 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. At a -16.1°F design temperature, Sioux Falls sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.