Heat Pump Payback in Wellington, CO
Should Wellington switch to a heat pump?
In Wellington, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Running costs here land $300 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Wellington's numbers say wait.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Wellington. Look one up here.
Why Wellington's climate drives this number
Wellington has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 6295 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 582 cooling degree days. -10.3°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -29°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.45 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Wellington 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 Nunn 7 Nne, the closest NOAA station, 15.2 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Wellington
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 6,506 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,157 a year. Wellington's gas rate of $11.17 per Mcf, applied to the 66 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $857 a year, against 16.53¢ 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 $10,007 behind.
How sensitive Wellington's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Wellington if electricity fell to 11.7¢/kWh (from 16.53¢) or gas rose above $15.75 per Mcf (from $11.17). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Wellington, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Wellington, compared
Gas isn't universal in Wellington, many houses run on electric heat already. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,602 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.2 years.
Where Wellington ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Wellington's winter puts it at rank 115 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2799 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.
Next step if you live in Wellington
About 12,100 people live in Wellington, Colorado, 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.
Where Wellington's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page, the 2.45 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. At a -10.3°F design temperature, Wellington sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.