Heat Pump Payback in Ennis, TX
Should Ennis switch to a heat pump?
Ennis technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Lower bills claw that back: about $326 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 16.9 years. Ennis's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Compare against another city
Landed on Ennis by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
The climate behind Ennis's payback figure
Ennis has a mild winter by US standards, 1875 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 2786 cooling degree days. 13.8°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 11.7°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.03 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. The average winter here is gentle, but sizing follows the cold snaps, and 13.8°F is below the 25°F point where a standard unit leans on resistance backup, so a cold-climate unit is what gets priced for Ennis. These numbers come from Lancaster Airport, the closest NOAA station, 18.2 miles out.
Ennis's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,567 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $637 a year. Ennis's gas rate of $19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 20 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $962 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Buying outright rather than at replacement time stretches payback to longer than the 15-year equipment life. Over 15 years, compared with a like-for-like replacement, the heat pump leaves you $615 behind.
How sensitive Ennis's result is to prices
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 114.3¢/kWh (it is 16.15¢ now) or gas drops below $2.74 per Mcf (now $19.42); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Ennis. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $326 a year saved, a difference under $2,282 pays back within 7 years here, and under $3,260 within 10.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Ennis has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Ennis's answer improves. Switching saves about $713 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 14 years.
How Ennis compares nationally
Ennis lands at position 2494 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1623 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.
Deciding what's next in Ennis, TX
About 24,753 people live in Ennis, Texas, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 3.03 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Ennis's 13.8°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.