ZIP codes, city+state, or full addresses all work. Used only for weather data and electricity rates, never stored.
Dual fuel runs the heat pump in mild weather and hands over to your existing gas or oil plant on the coldest days. It is the most common commercial retrofit in cold climates: you skip the electric backup, avoid a service upgrade, and, because your winter electrical peak never happens, usually avoid the demand charge that makes full electrification expensive.
Below this outdoor temperature the fossil plant takes over. Lower means more electrification and more carbon saved; higher means lower running cost where gas is cheap.
Cuts HVAC energy by scheduling and resetting. Worth much less on a 24/7 building than a weekday one, which is reflected below.
Several states pay more on these sites, and tax-exempt owners can take the 48E credit as a direct cash payment under §6417.
Geothermal is the only type that earns the 48E tax credit, and it has the lowest running cost. It needs somewhere to drill, so tell us if that is out of the question.
A heat exchanger that preheats your hot water from heat the geothermal unit is throwing away. In cooling season that heat is pure waste, so the hot water is effectively free; in heating season some is diverted, so coverage is lower. Cost is a storage tank, the coil comes with the machine.
Conductivity sets how much bore length a ton needs. Rock is the cheapest here even though it drills slower. It moves heat well, so you need fewer feet.
Your worst heating month, usually January. Use the electric bill if you heat with electricity, or the fuel bill for gas, oil or propane. This is the single most useful number you can give us: it tells us how hard your building works in the cold, which an annual total cannot.
Your worst cooling month, usually July or August. Electric bill. Together with the winter month this separates your heating load from your cooling load.
Total for the year, or your monthly average × 12. Used to check the peak-month figures add up. If the two disagree we will tell you rather than quietly pick one.
Gas, oil or propane for the year. Leave blank if all-electric.
Annual totals tell us how much you spend; the two peak months tell us how your building behaves. With them we can fit the model to your actual envelope and occupancy instead of assuming a typical building of your type, normally the single biggest accuracy improvement available here.
Tax-exempt orgs can receive ITC via direct pay (elective pay) instead of tax credits.
Federal 21% + state corporate tax. Used for MACRS/Section 179 depreciation benefit.
Affects heating/cooling load estimates. Most pre-2000 commercial buildings are "average" or "poor".
Commercial solar can offset a significant portion of heat pump operating costs, dramatically improving payback.
Find your effective rate on your bill: total $ ÷ total kWh. Commercial rates are typically $0.08–$0.18/kWh depending on region.
Found on your commercial utility bill. Typically $5–$25/kW/month. Leave blank and we use your utility's published rate where we have it. In 18 states that is a real charge, not zero, so the figure below tells you which rate was applied.
The highest demand figure on your bill, usually set by summer cooling. Without it we assume the heat pump's winter peak partly stacks on your existing peak; with it we can tell whether it fits underneath and costs you nothing extra.
Based on EIA Annual Energy Outlook mid-case scenario.
Based on EIA Annual Energy Outlook mid-case scenario.
• Utility-side electrical work — transformer, service feed or line extension. The study behind our service-upgrade figure states plainly that both the cost and the likelihood of this work are unknown, so we do not guess. For scale, New York utilities quote roughly $25,000–$50,000 for a transformer and $140,000–$210,000 for a new three-phase primary-metered service.
• Asbestos or other hazardous-material abatement. Common in mechanical rooms and pipe insulation in buildings from before the mid-1980s, and it can stop a project outright until resolved.
• Roof structural reinforcement. A heat pump is often heavier than the unit it replaces, and a structural engineer's sign-off is sometimes required before a rooftop swap.
• Ductwork replacement or resizing. Heat pumps move more air than a fossil furnace at the same output, so an existing duct system is sometimes undersized.
• Anything found once work starts. Concealed conditions are the usual reason a real invoice exceeds a written estimate.
• Get two bids, the spread is larger than you would expect. On identical scope, contractor-to-contractor variance was measured at 30% for service upgrades and up to 3.7× on smaller electrical work. That is bigger than most of the modelling differences on this page.
• Crane and rigging is a floor, not a quote. Ours is built from equipment rental plus an operator, which assumes self-performing. A crane service company charges portal-to-portal with a four-hour minimum, so expect more.
• Air-to-water heat pump efficiency is manufacturer-declared. There is no US certification programme that rates air-to-water heating performance, the relevant standard certifies the manufacturer's selection software, and it is a cooling standard. Treat those figures as claims, not ratings.
• Prevailing wage prices the wage rate, not the outcome. If you selected it, we raise the labour cost accordingly, but 20 of 26 peer-reviewed studies find no statistically significant effect on final project cost, because productivity substitution absorbs much of the rate difference. Our figure is closer to an upper bound.
• Heat pump heating efficiency calculated using manufacturer COP ratings, adjusted for your local climate using piecewise temperature band model. Annual heating energy derived from your energy bills or DOE CBECS EUI benchmarks.
• Install costs are regionally adjusted using BLS May 2024 HVAC labor wage data for your state. Commercial systems benefit from economies of scale at larger sizes. Get 2–3 quotes from certified commercial contractors for accuracy.
• O&M costs based on ASHRAE/BOMA industry benchmarks for commercial HVAC maintenance contracts by system type and size.
• Grid carbon intensity uses EPA eGRID 2023 state-level output emission rates. Fuel combustion CO₂ values use EIA/DOE emission factors per fuel type.