Heat Pump Payback in Clovis, NM
Clovis, NM: the heat pump payback math
The payback math works in Clovis on paper, past the equipment's own working life. $5,500 is what Clovis would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Clovis's residents would see roughly $19 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 289.9 years. Clovis's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Clovis. Look one up here.
The climate behind Clovis's payback figure
Clovis has a real but manageable winter, 3662 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1623 cooling degree days. 10.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -0.9°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.96 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Clovis 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 Clovis Municipal Airport, 6.3 miles from Clovis, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Clovis
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,133 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $666 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 38 Mcf a year of gas at Clovis's $9.83 per-Mcf rate, about $685 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 14.75¢/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 $5,215 behind.
How sensitive Clovis's result is to prices
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 15.5¢/kWh (it is 14.75¢ now) or gas drops below $9.33 per Mcf (now $9.83); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Clovis. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $19 a year saved, a difference under $133 pays back within 7 years here, and under $190 within 10.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Clovis heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Clovis's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,012 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 9.9 years.
Where Clovis ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Clovis's winter puts it at rank 1706 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1108 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Clovis
About 37,555 people live in Clovis, New Mexico, 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, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Clovis's 2.96 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Clovis's 10.9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here, see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.