Heat Pump Payback in Eagle Mountain, UT
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Eagle Mountain, UT
Eagle Mountain technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $5,500 is what Eagle Mountain would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Eagle Mountain's residents would see roughly $50 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 109.1 years. Eagle Mountain's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Eagle Mountain. Look one up here.
Why Eagle Mountain's climate drives this number
5203 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Eagle Mountain has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 1246 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: 12.9°F here (coldest 2024 reading 12°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.01 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Eagle Mountain, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station Provo Municipal Airport, 16.6 miles from Eagle Mountain, the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,377 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $714 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 54 Mcf a year of gas at Eagle Mountain's $10.19 per-Mcf rate, about $764 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 13.12¢/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 $4,744 behind.
The break-even point in Eagle Mountain
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 14.4¢/kWh (it is 13.12¢ now) or gas drops below $9.26 per Mcf (now $10.19); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Eagle Mountain. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $50 a year saved, a difference under $350 pays back within 7 years here, and under $500 within 10.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Eagle Mountain has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Eagle Mountain's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,227 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 8.2 years.
Eagle Mountain against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Eagle Mountain's winter puts it at rank 561 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 663 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Eagle Mountain, UT
About 60,575 people live in Eagle Mountain, Utah, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Eagle Mountain's 3.01 seasonal COP and payback figure. Eagle Mountain's 12.9°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.