Should West Fargo switch to a heat pump?
In West Fargo, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. 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 $136 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: West Fargo's numbers say wait.
Why West Fargo's climate drives this number
7040 heating degree days pile up here every year, so West Fargo has one of the harshest winters in the country; the cooling side runs to 720 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. -11°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -14.1°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.44 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, West Fargo sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station HECTOR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, 6.5 miles from West Fargo — the closest one on record.
West Fargo's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 7,306 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $944 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 73 Mcf a year at 9.50 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $808 a year (electricity here runs 11.92¢/kWh). Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $5,544 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in West Fargo heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and West Fargo's answer improves. About $1,292 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.2-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where West Fargo ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, West Fargo comes in at 45 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 998 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
What to do with this number in West Fargo
About 41,027 people live in West Fargo, North Dakota, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how West Fargo's 2.44 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a -11°F design temperature, West Fargo sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.