Troy, MO: the heat pump payback math
Troy technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $3,500 is what Troy would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Lower bills claw that back: about $221 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 15.8 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Troy.
Troy's weather, in the numbers that matter
Troy has a real but manageable winter — 3754 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1476 cooling degree days. 1.4°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -7.6°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.73 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Troy — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station WASHINGTON REGIONAL AIRPORT, 26.8 miles from Troy — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,482 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $608 a year. That compares with roughly 39 Mcf a year of gas at Troy's 14.94 per-Mcf rate — about $830 a year — against a local electricity rate of 12.83¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 61 years; over 15 years the net position sits $180 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Troy, compared
Not every home in Troy has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Troy's answer improves. The saving here runs about $857 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 9.3 years.
How Troy compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Troy comes in at 1646 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2398 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Troy, MO
Troy, Missouri is home to about 14,963 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 Troy, 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 2.73 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Troy's 1.4°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.