Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Alpine, UT

Alpine technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). That premium is recovered through $50 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 69.5 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Alpine.

How cold Alpine actually gets

5203 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Alpine has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 1246 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 12.9°F here (record low 12°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.01 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Alpine — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, PROVO MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 17.1 miles from Alpine.

Alpine's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,377 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $714 a year. That compares with roughly 54 Mcf a year of gas at Alpine's 10.19 per-Mcf rate — about $764 a year — against a local electricity rate of 13.12¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 267.9 years; over 15 years the net position sits $2,744 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Plenty of homes in Alpine heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Alpine's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,227 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.5 years.

Where Alpine ranks in this dataset

Alpine lands at position 575 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 3079 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Alpine, UT

Alpine, Utah is home to about 10,548 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. In Alpine, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Reading further on this page's numbers

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Alpine's 3.01 seasonal COP and payback figure. Alpine's 12.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.