Yeah, I just bought a home in central Kentucky. I know what you mean about the temps. But even then, just using the heat pump on our little 1100 sq ft place, the bills were around $100 in that stinking humid 95+ stuff.
And yeah, the condo stuff you mentioned is exactly why we chose it. Our house had heat bills in the winter that reached a peak of over $400.
When the real estate market recovers somewhat, we are going to sell this place. When we had hot and cold running children (our kids plus ALL their friends since we are very close to their school) the place seemed quite full, but for just the two of us it's way too big.
We'll probably build another small passive solar house and have a big pole barn out back for the dog, horse, carpentry, ham radio etc. stuff. Right now it's all in the garage!