Heat Pump Payback in St. Marys, PA
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in St. Marys, PA
Here in St. Marys, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $173 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: St. Marys's numbers say wait.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just St. Marys. Look one up here.
Why St. Marys's climate drives this number
St. Marys has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 5757 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 490 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 0°F here (coldest 2024 reading -5.1°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.7 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, St. Marys sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station Bradford Regional Airport, 24.4 miles from St. Marys, the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,399 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,207 a year. That compares with roughly 60 Mcf a year of gas at St. Marys's $15.04 per-Mcf rate, about $1,034 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 20.75¢/kWh. With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $8,102 behind.
What would change St. Marys's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in St. Marys if electricity fell to 17.4¢/kWh (from 20.75¢) or gas rose above $17.93 per Mcf (from $15.04). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in St. Marys, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in St. Marys, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and St. Marys's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,950 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.1 years.
St. Marys against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, St. Marys's winter puts it at rank 297 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2754 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 St. Marys
About 12,361 people live in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how St. Marys's 2.7 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. St. Marys's 0°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.