Heat Pump Payback in West Des Moines, IA
Should West Des Moines switch to a heat pump?
Here in West Des Moines, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $5,500 is what West Des Moines would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $70 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's West Des Moines's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just West Des Moines. Look one up here.
West Des Moines's weather, in the numbers that matter
Degree days tell the story here: West Des Moines racks up 4972 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1291 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -11.9°F here (coldest 2024 reading -17°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.41 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in West Des Moines, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station Des Moines International Airp, 6.7 miles from West Des Moines, the closest one on record.
West Des Moines's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,224 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $842 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 52 Mcf a year at $10.61 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $772 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 13.31¢/kWh). Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $6,546 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
What would change West Des Moines's answer
For the verdict in West Des Moines to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 11.8¢/kWh from 13.31¢, or gas climb past $11.96 per Mcf from $10.61. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in West Des Moines; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in West Des Moines 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 $1,057 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 9.5 years.
West Des Moines against the rest of the country
West Des Moines lands at position 742 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 521 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in West Des Moines
West Des Moines, Iowa is home to about 73,664 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 West Des Moines, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how West Des Moines's 2.41 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. West Des Moines's -11.9°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.