Heat Pump Payback in Alpine, UT
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 $5,500 more up front here. That premium is recovered through $50 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 109.1 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Alpine.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Alpine. Look one up here.
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 (coldest 2024 reading 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 with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 13.12¢/kWh. Buying outright rather than at replacement time stretches payback to longer than the 15-year equipment life. Over 15 years, compared with a like-for-like replacement, the heat pump leaves you $4,744 behind.
What would change Alpine's answer
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Alpine if electricity rose past 14.4¢/kWh from 13.12¢, or gas fell under $9.26 per Mcf from $10.19. A useful quote test for Alpine: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $500 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $350.
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 $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.2 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.