Heat Pump Payback in Carencro, LA
Is a heat pump worth it in Carencro?
This one's marginal in Carencro: it only clears if you stay long enough. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,000 more up front here. Carencro's residents would see roughly $276 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 10.9 years. It's a genuine toss-up here, Carencro's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Compare against another city
Landed on Carencro by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
How cold Carencro actually gets
1014 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Carencro barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 3442 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 28.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 18°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.06 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Carencro's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Lafayette Regional Airport, 8 miles from Carencro.
The yearly running costs in Carencro
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 839 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $510 a year. That compares with roughly 11 Mcf a year of gas at Carencro's $17.38 per-Mcf rate, about $787 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 13.52¢/kWh. If the current system still worked and you replaced it anyway, the full cost would take longer than the 15-year equipment life to earn back; against buying a new furnace and AC regardless, the 15-year total lands $1,146 ahead.
The break-even point in Carencro
In Carencro the cooling savings outweigh the extra electricity for heating, so no plausible change in the electricity rate would make the old furnace and AC cheaper to run. A useful quote test for Carencro: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $2,760 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $1,932.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Carencro, many houses run on electric heat already. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. The gap still doesn't close: the $7,500 incremental cost outlasts the 15-year equipment life here even against resistance heat.
Carencro against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Carencro comes in at 2901 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2669 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.
What to do with this number in Carencro
Carencro, Louisiana is home to about 12,883 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 Carencro, 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
Every constant behind this page, the 3.06 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Homes in Carencro without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.