Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Amarillo, TX
This one's marginal in Amarillo: it only clears if you stay long enough. 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). Amarillo's residents would see roughly $363 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 9.6 years. Whether that's worth it in Amarillo depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
The climate behind Amarillo's payback figure
3434 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Amarillo has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 2154 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 8.1°F, against a record low of 0°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.89 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Amarillo needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, AMARILLO RICK HUSBAND INTL AI, 7.4 miles from Amarillo.
The month-to-month numbers for Amarillo
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,009 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $783 a year. Amarillo's gas rate of 19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 36 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,145 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 37.2 years, for a 15-year net position $1,943 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Amarillo heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,073 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 7.5 years.
Amarillo against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Amarillo comes in at 1786 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 122 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Amarillo, TX
About 203,729 people live in Amarillo, Texas, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here — the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Amarillo's 2.89 seasonal COP and payback figure. Amarillo's 8.1°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.