Will a heat pump pay off in Azle, TX?

This one's marginal in Azle: 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). That premium is recovered through $356 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 9.8 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Azle's numbers don't point clearly either way.

How cold Azle actually gets

Degree days tell the story here: Azle racks up 1554 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 3373 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 19.9°F, against a record low of 12.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.18 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Azle sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station FORT WORTH NAVAL AIR STATION, 10.3 miles from Azle — the closest one on record.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,237 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $664 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 16 Mcf a year at 19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,020 a year (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 37.9 years; over 15 years the net position sits $1,840 ahead.

Electric resistance heat in Azle, compared

Gas isn't universal in Azle — 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 $677 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 11.8 years.

How Azle compares nationally

Azle lands at position 2671 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2388 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.

What to do with this number in Azle

Azle, Texas is home to about 15,046 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 Azle, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

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

Where Azle's figure comes from

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Azle's 3.18 seasonal COP and payback figure. Azle's 19.9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.