Dixon, CA: the heat pump payback math
This one's marginal in Dixon: it only clears if you stay long enough. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $1,000 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). That premium is recovered through $123 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 8.1 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Dixon's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Dixon's weather, in the numbers that matter
2445 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Dixon has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 1427 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 32°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 30.2°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.15 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Dixon's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium — a standard unit holds up fine. Source: NOAA station UNIVERSITY AIRPORT, 6.3 miles from Dixon — 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 1,965 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,045 a year. That compares with roughly 25 Mcf a year of gas at Dixon's 22.01 per-Mcf rate — about $1,168 a year — against a local electricity rate of 32.83¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 89.5 years; over 15 years the net position sits $844 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Dixon — 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. Switching saves about $1,595 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $5,500 spent up front comes back in about 3.4 years.
How Dixon compares nationally
Dixon lands at position 2208 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1896 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). 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 Dixon
Dixon, California is home to about 20,296 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 Dixon, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Dixon's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Dixon's 3.15 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Homes in Dixon without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead — the numbers there differ from the gas case above.