Farmers Branch, TX: the heat pump payback math
In Farmers Branch, the math is close enough that it comes down to how long you plan to stay. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). That premium is recovered through $361 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 9.7 years. Whether that's worth it in Farmers Branch depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
Why Farmers Branch's climate drives this number
1620 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Farmers Branch has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 3408 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 18.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 9.5°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.15 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Farmers Branch — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station ADDISON AIRPORT, 3.8 miles from Farmers Branch — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Farmers Branch
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,302 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $680 a year. Farmers Branch's gas rate of 19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 17 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,041 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 37.4 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,920 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Farmers Branch heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Farmers Branch's answer improves. Switching saves about $696 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 11.5 years.
Where Farmers Branch ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Farmers Branch comes in at 2647 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1112 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.
Next step for 37,341 people in Farmers Branch
About 37,341 people live in Farmers Branch, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page — the 3.15 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Farmers Branch's 18.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.