Will a heat pump pay off in Brownsville, TX?
The math in Brownsville isn't close — a heat pump wins outright. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $1,000 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Lower bills claw that back: about $362 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 2.8 years. Nothing about that conclusion is generic — it's built entirely from Brownsville's own numbers.
The climate behind Brownsville's payback figure
Brownsville barely has a winter to speak of — 258 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 4772 cooling degree days. 37°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 28.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.3 on the standard unit fit for this climate. A standard ducted system is enough here; Brownsville's design temperature doesn't justify the cold-climate premium. These numbers come from BROWNSVILLE/S PADRE ISLAND IN, the closest NOAA station, 6.3 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 198 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $689 a year. Brownsville's gas rate of 19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 3 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,051 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 30.4 years; over 15 years the net position sits $4,429 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Brownsville heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Brownsville's answer improves. About $415 a year comes back this way, enough that the 13.2-year payback clears the $5,500 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Brownsville ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Brownsville's winter puts it at rank 3125 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 136 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.
What to do with this number in Brownsville
About 191,967 people live in Brownsville, 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, it's worth getting quotes before your current system fails, not after.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Brownsville's 3.3 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. See what Brownsville's figure looks like without the $2,000 federal credit in the guide to how that credit moves the payback window.