Will a heat pump pay off in Buckeye, AZ?
The math in Buckeye isn't close — a heat pump wins outright. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $1,000 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Lower bills claw that back: about $391 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 2.6 years. Nothing about that conclusion is generic — it's built entirely from Buckeye's own numbers.
Why Buckeye's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Buckeye racks up 1429 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 4336 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 28.4°F here (record low 24.8°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.05 for the standard class of unit this climate calls for. A standard ducted system is enough here; Buckeye's design temperature doesn't justify the cold-climate premium. Source: NOAA station BUCKEYE MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 2.6 miles from Buckeye — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Buckeye
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,186 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $759 a year. That compares with roughly 15 Mcf a year of gas at Buckeye's 18.58 per-Mcf rate — about $1,150 a year — against a local electricity rate of 15.55¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 28.1 years; over 15 years the net position sits $4,865 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Buckeye heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Buckeye's answer improves. The saving here runs about $677 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 8.1 years.
Where Buckeye ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Buckeye comes in at 2717 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 274 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.
Next step for 114,334 people in Buckeye
About 114,334 people live in Buckeye, Arizona, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Buckeye's 3.05 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. See what Buckeye's figure looks like without the $2,000 federal credit in the guide to how that credit moves the payback window.