Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Austin, TX
Austin sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. $3,500 is what Austin would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. That premium is recovered through $347 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 10.1 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Austin's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Austin's weather, in the numbers that matter
1136 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Austin barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 3651 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: 21.9°F here (record low 16°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.23 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Austin sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station AUSTIN-CAMP MABRY, 1.6 miles from Austin — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 891 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $647 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 12 Mcf a year of gas at Austin's 19.42 per-Mcf rate — about $994 a year — against a local electricity rate of 16.15¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 38.9 years, for a 15-year net position $1,710 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Austin — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Austin's answer improves. About $582 a year comes back this way, enough that the 13.7-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Austin against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Austin's winter puts it at rank 2837 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 13 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.
Next step for 993,588 people in Austin
Austin, Texas is home to about 993,588 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 Austin, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 3.23 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a 21.9°F design temperature, Austin sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.