Should Vincennes switch to a heat pump?

Vincennes is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $28 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Vincennes's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Vincennes's weather, in the numbers that matter

Degree days tell the story here: Vincennes racks up 3663 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1510 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 1°F here (record low -2°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.72 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, Vincennes sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station LRNCVLL-VINCNES INTL ARPT, 8 miles from Vincennes — the closest one on record.

Vincennes's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,410 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $800 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 38 Mcf a year at 11.49 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $772 a year (electricity here runs 17.03¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $3,926 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Vincennes heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,113 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 7.2 years.

Vincennes against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Vincennes's winter puts it at rank 1705 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2247 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

What to do with this number in Vincennes

Vincennes, Indiana is home to about 16,506 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 Vincennes, 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

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Vincennes's 2.72 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Vincennes's 1°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.