Will a heat pump pay off in Alice, TX?
Alice is a clear case: a heat pump beats what you have by a wide margin. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $1,000 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Lower bills claw that back: about $335 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 3 years. That verdict holds specifically for Alice's own climate and rates, not a national average.
Alice's weather, in the numbers that matter
583 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Alice barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 4074 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 33.1°F here (record low 21°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.19 for the standard class of unit this climate calls for. Alice's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium — a standard unit holds up fine. Source: NOAA station ALICE INTERNATIONAL ARPT, 2.7 miles from Alice — the closest one on record.
Alice's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 463 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $636 a year. Alice's gas rate of 19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 6 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $971 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 32.8 years; over 15 years the net position sits $4,023 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Alice — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $455 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 12.1 years.
Alice against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Alice's winter puts it at rank 3035 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2131 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Alice, TX
Alice, Texas is home to about 17,595 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. Given the math above, Alice is a place worth lining up quotes ahead of a breakdown, not waiting for one.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Alice's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Alice's 3.19 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. The $2,000 federal credit baked into Alice's number is explained, with the before-and-after math, in the tax credit guide.