Heat Pump Payback in Cedar City, UT
Is a heat pump worth it in Cedar City?
In Cedar City, the extra upfront cost technically comes back, just not before the equipment wears out. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Lower bills claw that back: about $6 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 965.7 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Cedar City.
Checking a different city
Landed on Cedar City by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Cedar City's weather, in the numbers that matter
5288 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Cedar City has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 1275 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: 3.9°F here (coldest 2024 reading 0°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.79 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Cedar City needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Source: NOAA station Cedar City Regional Airport, 1.7 miles from Cedar City, the closest one on record.
Cedar City's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,799 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $772 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 55 Mcf a year of gas at Cedar City's $10.19 per-Mcf rate, about $778 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 13.12¢/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 $5,415 behind.
The break-even point in Cedar City
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Cedar City if electricity rose past 13.3¢/kWh from 13.12¢, or gas fell under $10.09 per Mcf from $10.19. A useful quote test for Cedar City: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $60 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $42.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Cedar City, many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,201 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.3 years.
Where Cedar City ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Cedar City comes in at 499 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1002 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in Cedar City
Cedar City, Utah is home to about 40,885 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 Cedar City, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Cedar City's 2.79 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a 3.9°F design temperature, Cedar City sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.