Heat Pump Payback in Barstow, CA
Should Barstow switch to a heat pump?
In Barstow, a heat pump pays for itself within a reasonable window. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,000. Lower bills claw that back: about $451 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 6.6 years. The window here is reasonable, and it's specific to what Barstow actually pays for power and gas.
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Landed on Barstow by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Barstow's weather, in the numbers that matter
Barstow has a mild winter by US standards, 1999 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 3720 cooling degree days. 28°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 25°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.03 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Barstow's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. These numbers come from Barstow-Daggett Airport, the closest NOAA station, 14.6 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Barstow
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 1,671 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,590 a year on electricity. Barstow's gas rate of $22.01 per Mcf, applied to the 21 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $2,041 a year, against 32.83¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $3,769 ahead.
What would change Barstow's answer
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Barstow if electricity rose past 2160.5¢/kWh from 32.83¢, or gas fell under $0.33 per Mcf from $22.01. A useful quote test for Barstow: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $4,510 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $3,157.
Electric resistance heat in Barstow, compared
Gas isn't universal in Barstow, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Barstow's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,655 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $7,500 spent up front comes back in about 4.5 years.
How Barstow compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Barstow comes in at 2421 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1612 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Barstow, CA
Barstow, California is home to about 24,897 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. Given the math above, Barstow is a place worth lining up quotes ahead of a breakdown, not waiting for one.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Barstow's 3.03 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Homes in Barstow without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.