Heat Pump Payback in El Mirage, AZ
Is a heat pump worth it in El Mirage?
El Mirage clears a genuine payback here, inside a reasonable stretch of years. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,000 more up front here. El Mirage's residents would see roughly $407 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 7.4 years. The window here is reasonable, and it's specific to what El Mirage actually pays for power and gas.
Not the city you meant?
El Mirage is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
How cold El Mirage actually gets
1050 heating degree days pile up here every year, so El Mirage barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 4871 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 31.6°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was 31.5°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.14 for the recommended standard unit. El Mirage's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. These numbers come from Luke AFB Airport, the closest NOAA station, 3.6 miles out.
The yearly running costs in El Mirage
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 847 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $777 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 11 Mcf a year at $18.58 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,185 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 15.55¢/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 $3,110 ahead.
How sensitive El Mirage's result is to prices
In El Mirage 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 El Mirage: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $4,070 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,849.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in El Mirage has gas service. 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 $618 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $7,500 spent up front comes back in about 12.1 years.
How El Mirage compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, El Mirage comes in at 2878 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1134 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.
Deciding what's next in El Mirage, AZ
El Mirage, Arizona is home to about 36,468 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. Given the math above, El Mirage is a place worth lining up quotes ahead of a breakdown, not waiting for one.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Where El Mirage's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how El Mirage's 3.14 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Homes in El Mirage without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.