Should Versailles switch to a heat pump?
Versailles technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $3,500 is what Versailles 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 $160 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 21.8 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Versailles.
How cold Versailles actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Versailles racks up 3871 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1200 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 7.5°F, against a record low of -6.2°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.88 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Versailles 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. Source: NOAA station VERSAILLES 3 NNW , 3.4 miles from Versailles — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,403 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $637 a year. Versailles's gas rate of 14.23 per Mcf, applied to the 40 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $797 a year, against 14.39¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 84.1 years, for a 15-year net position $1,093 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Versailles has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $997 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 8 years.
Versailles against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Versailles comes in at 1609 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 3056 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Versailles
Versailles, Kentucky is home to about 10,656 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 Versailles, 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
Every constant behind this page — the 2.88 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Versailles's 7.5°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.