Heat Pump Payback in Wilkes-Barre, PA
Is a heat pump worth it in Wilkes-Barre?
In Wilkes-Barre, 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 $5,500. Running costs here land $48 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Wilkes-Barre's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
Wilkes-Barre is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
The climate behind Wilkes-Barre's payback figure
5021 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Wilkes-Barre has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 857 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 8.1°F here (coldest 2024 reading -2°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.89 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Wilkes-Barre 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Ai, 9.8 miles from Wilkes-Barre.
Wilkes-Barre's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,399 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,064 a year. That compares with roughly 52 Mcf a year of gas at Wilkes-Barre's $15.04 per-Mcf rate, about $1,017 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 20.75¢/kWh. 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 $6,213 behind.
How sensitive Wilkes-Barre's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Wilkes-Barre if electricity fell to 19.6¢/kWh (from 20.75¢) or gas rose above $15.95 per Mcf (from $15.04). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Wilkes-Barre, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Wilkes-Barre, compared
Plenty of homes in Wilkes-Barre heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. About $1,804 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.5-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Wilkes-Barre against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Wilkes-Barre comes in at 668 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 922 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in Wilkes-Barre
About 44,661 people live in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Wilkes-Barre's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Wilkes-Barre's 2.89 seasonal COP and payback figure. Wilkes-Barre's 8.1°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.