Heat Pump Payback in Sturgis, MI
Sturgis, MI: the heat pump payback math
Here in Sturgis, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $5,500 is what Sturgis would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $365 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Sturgis's numbers say wait.
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Sturgis is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
The climate behind Sturgis's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Sturgis racks up 5289 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 711 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 -0.4°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -10.7°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.69 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Sturgis 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 Kirsch Municipal Airport, the closest NOAA station, 1.5 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Sturgis
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,979 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,157 a year. Sturgis's gas rate of $10.92 per Mcf, applied to the 55 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $792 a year, against 20.72¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $10,971 behind.
The break-even point in Sturgis
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Sturgis if electricity fell to 12.9¢/kWh (from 20.72¢) or gas rose above $17.54 per Mcf (from $10.92). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Sturgis, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Sturgis, many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,809 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 5.5 years.
Where Sturgis ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Sturgis comes in at 495 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2984 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 Sturgis, MI
About 11,030 people live in Sturgis, Michigan, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Sturgis's 2.69 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Sturgis's -0.4°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.