Pennsylvania Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Centre County, Pennsylvania

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Which costs less to run in Centre County?

A gray outdoor condenser unit with a top fan grille sits on a concrete pad beside a dark horizontal-lap-sided wall at night, with an electrical disconnect box and conduit to the right and mulch and leafy plants around the pad.

Heat pump

To heat your home here$2.37per 100,000 Btu

A beige residential furnace with two louvered access panels stands in a basement against a dark blue wall, connected to galvanized metal ductwork and a flue pipe, with copper and PVC pipes nearby and a bare bulb overhead.

Furnace

To heat your home here$1.64per 100,000 Btu

At Pennsylvania's gas and electricity prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat as a heat pump for at least 30% less.

Btu stands for British thermal unit, the standard measure of heat energy.

Where does a heat pump shine?

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    A heat pump runs on electricity alone. Nothing burns inside the house.

    A kitchen with navy blue cabinets, white countertop, white subway tile backsplash, a stainless steel range hood above a black induction cooktop with a metal kettle, plus mugs, a utensil crock, a cutting board and a potted plant.

  • Steady, even comfort

    Instead of short bursts of heat, it keeps a gentle, steady output going. The house stays at one comfortable temperature.

    A golden retriever sleeps on a woven rug in a living room with a navy armchair holding an open book and gray throw, a lit fireplace, a wooden sideboard with a lamp, and a window showing snow outside.

  • Heats and cools in one system

    One machine handles the heat in winter and the cooling in summer. There's no second system to buy or keep up.

    A beige sofa with a light blue cushion and navy knitted fringed throw sits in front of a dark navy multi-pane window overlooking a garden with hydrangeas, beside a wooden coffee table holding books, a mug and a vase of hydrangeas, with a woven basket and potted plant to the right on a jute rug.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Pairs with any central AC

    A furnace's blower and ducts carry cooled air too. Adding central AC uses the same system.

    Sunlit wood floor with a metal floor vent near sheer white curtains at a window, a blue-trimmed doorway and tall potted plant at left, a blue patterned rug in the foreground, and a wooden chair draped with a blue fringed throw at right.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    Gas furnaces have heated homes for generations. Almost every HVAC tech knows them inside and out.

    A gloved hand holds a white pleated air filter in front of a furnace and ductwork in a basement, beside a blue shelving unit holding baskets and folded plaid blankets.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    Turn the heat up and the furnace answers right away. There's no long wait for the house to catch up.

    A mudroom with a dark blue windowed exterior door showing snow outside, a sheer white curtain at left, a wooden bench with a cushion, blue pillow, fringed throw and speckled mug, a dark coat on a wall hook, two pairs of snowy boots on a tile floor, a woven rug, and a metal floor vent.

What winter actually asks of a heat pump here

Your heat runs eight months a year in Centre County, October through May, and the overnight low averages 20°F across December, January and February. That's the number that matters, because a standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating below 40°F, and it often needs backup heat below about 35°F. Twenty degrees sits below both marks. So does every one of the roughly 135 nights a year here that drop to freezing or lower, more than half the nights across the whole heating season.

That doesn't mean the heat pump quits. It means the furnace is doing more of the work than the running-cost number alone shows, on more nights than not. A gas furnace built to the federal minimum makes heat for $1.64 per 100,000 Btu here against $2.37 for a heat pump, and that heat pump figure already assumes nothing added for backup. On a 20°F night, something has to make up what the heat pump can't, and that's either a backup element or a second system, and either one changes what the winter actually costs you to run.

The four nights a year that hit 0°F or below are a small part of the picture, not the main one. A heat pump built to the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate standard is tested to hold at least 70 percent of its 47°F capacity at 5°F, and field testing of cold-climate units found backup heat covered only a small share of the load between 0°F and 35°F, with the system running on backup alone rarely happening even at 0°F. That's a different machine than the federal-minimum one the running-cost band is built on. If a heat pump is on the table here, which one matters as much as whether.

A two-story light blue clapboard house with dark blue shutters, a white columned entry, and brick chimneys, flanked by a yellow house and a white picket fence, with plowed snowbanks along a bare road in the foreground under a clear sky.

What the two machines mean for the rest of the year

Cooling here runs two months, July and August, well short of the eight months of heat. A furnace has no part in those two months. It burns gas or oil to make heat and nothing else, so for a third of the year it sits unused while a separate air conditioner carries the house. A heat pump runs the same system in reverse and covers both jobs, which is less equipment to install, less to maintain, and one less outdoor unit taking up space.

On straight running cost for heat alone, the order here is fixed: a gas furnace at $1.64 per 100,000 Btu, a heat pump at $2.37, an oil furnace at $3.03. Gas beats both. But almost a fifth of homes in Centre County heat with oil, and against oil the heat pump is the cheaper machine to run, not the more expensive one. Which comparison applies depends on what's already feeding the house, gas, oil or electric resistance, more than on the heat pump itself.

Half the homes in this county were built in 1980 or earlier, which says nothing about what's actually in any one of them. Whether a gas line already reaches the house, what the existing ductwork can carry, and what system is there now are the things worth checking before weighing these numbers, because they decide which of these comparisons is the one that applies to your house.

Sources: NOAA nClimDiv · NOAA 1991–2020 seasonal normals · EIA SEDS 2024 · 10 CFR 430.32 · PNNL Building America guide · PNNL-37127 field study · ENERGY STAR product criteria · Census ACS 2020–2024

A two-story dark blue shingled house with white trim, two dormer windows and brick chimneys, surrounded by deep snow banks under a clear sky, with a bare tree at left and a gray-shingled neighboring house at right.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

  • Can a heat pump heat a house through a Pennsylvania winter?

    Yes, but a standard heat pump needs help on the coldest nights. Below 40°F it puts out less than its rated capacity, and below about 35°F it often turns on backup heat. About 4 nights a year here drop to 0°F or below, and field tests of cold-climate heat pumps found backup heat carried only a small share of the load even between 0°F and 35°F, with the unit running on backup alone rarely above 0°F. A cold-climate heat pump, certified to hold 70 percent of its capacity at 5°F, handles most of a Centre County winter on its own.

  • Do I need backup heat with a heat pump here?

    Most winters, yes. A standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating once it's below 40°F outside, and it often needs backup heat below about 35°F. The overnight low here averages 20°F across December, January and February, and over half the nights in the 8 months the heat runs are at or below freezing, so a standard heat pump will lean on backup heat through a lot of the season. A cold-climate model, rated to keep most of its capacity down to 5°F, needs much less of it.

  • What if my house doesn't have a gas line?

    Then the choice is a heat pump, electric resistance heat, or a furnace burning propane or oil. Oil is common here, about one in five homes use it, but it costs more to run than a heat pump: $3.03 against $2.37 per 100,000 Btu of heat. Electric resistance heat costs more still, since it burns electricity directly instead of moving heat the way a heat pump does.

  • Is a heat pump cheaper to run than a furnace in Centre County?

    No, a gas furnace runs cheaper here. It makes 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.64 against $2.37 for a heat pump, both figured at Pennsylvania's average fuel prices and each machine built to the federal minimum. The heat pump's number also assumes no backup heat is needed, which on the colder nights here usually isn't true.

A person in a navy shirt and work gloves connects red and blue gauge hoses to copper refrigerant lines on a beige outdoor condenser unit mounted on a concrete pad, with wrenches, a screwdriver and a tool bag on the gravel in the foreground.

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