Is a heat pump worth it in Wellington?
In Wellington, a heat pump is the cheaper choice, and not by a little. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $1,000 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Lower bills claw that back: about $334 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 3 years. Nothing about that conclusion is generic — it's built entirely from Wellington's own numbers.
Why Wellington's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Wellington racks up 106 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 4633 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 48°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 46.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.63 on the standard unit fit for this climate. A standard ducted system is enough here; Wellington's design temperature doesn't justify the cold-climate premium. These numbers come from PALM BEACH INTERNATIONAL AIRP, the closest NOAA station, 10.7 miles out.
Wellington's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 74 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $621 a year. That compares with roughly 1 Mcf a year of gas at Wellington's 25.48 per-Mcf rate — about $955 a year — against a local electricity rate of 15.43¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 33 years, leaving the 15-year total $4,005 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Wellington has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Wellington's answer improves. The saving here runs about $347 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 15.9 years.
Wellington against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Wellington comes in at 3143 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 623 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
What to do with this number in Wellington
About 63,258 people live in Wellington, Florida, 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, it's worth getting quotes before your current system fails, not after.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Wellington's 3.63 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. See what Wellington's figure looks like without the $2,000 federal credit in the guide to how that credit moves the payback window.