Is a heat pump worth it in El Mirage?
El Mirage is a clear case: a heat pump beats what you have by a wide margin. 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). El Mirage's residents would see roughly $407 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 2.5 years. That verdict holds specifically for El Mirage's own climate and rates, not a national average.
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, against a record low of 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 month-to-month numbers for 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 (electricity here runs 15.55¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 27 years, leaving the 15-year total $5,110 ahead.
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 $5,500 spent up front comes back in about 8.9 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. The $2,000 federal credit baked into El Mirage's number is explained, with the before-and-after math, in the tax credit guide.