Heat Pump Payback in Cabot, AR
Will a heat pump pay off in Cabot, AR?
The payback math works in Cabot on paper, past the equipment's own working life. $5,500 is what Cabot would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. That premium is recovered through $359 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 15.3 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Cabot.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Cabot. Look one up here.
Cabot's weather, in the numbers that matter
2606 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Cabot has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 2216 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 11.8°F here (coldest 2024 reading -2.6°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.98 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Mild on average, but the occasional cold snap is what sizes the equipment: at a 11.8°F design temperature Cabot falls just under the 25°F line where a standard heat pump starts leaning on resistance backup, so the model prices a cold-climate unit to be safe. Source: NOAA station Little Rock AFB Airport, 8 miles from Cabot, the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 2,214 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $545 a year. That compares with roughly 27 Mcf a year of gas at Cabot's $19.25 per-Mcf rate, about $904 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 13.28¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase, with a working furnace ripped out early, payback would take longer than the 15-year equipment life. Measured against the like-for-like replacement instead, a household here ends 15 years $117 behind.
The break-even point in Cabot
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Cabot if electricity rose past 42.4¢/kWh from 13.28¢, or gas fell under $6.03 per Mcf from $19.25. A useful quote test for Cabot: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,590 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,513.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Cabot has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Cabot's answer improves. Switching saves about $713 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 14 years.
Cabot against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Cabot comes in at 2097 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1455 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Cabot, AR
Cabot, Arkansas is home to about 27,575 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 Cabot, 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
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Cabot's 2.98 seasonal COP and payback figure. Cabot's 11.8°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.