Heat Pump Payback in Foley, AL
Is a heat pump worth it in Foley?
In Foley, the math is close enough that it comes down to how long you plan to stay. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,000. Lower bills claw that back: about $277 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 10.8 years. It's a genuine toss-up here, Foley's numbers don't point clearly either way.
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Landed on Foley by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Foley's weather, in the numbers that matter
Foley barely has a winter to speak of, 1169 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 3050 cooling degree days. 28.4°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 19.4°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.05 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Foley's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Jack Edwards Airport, 7.3 miles from Foley.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 971 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $594 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 12 Mcf a year of gas at Foley's $17.56 per-Mcf rate, about $871 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 16.62¢/kWh. 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 $1,159 ahead.
What would change Foley's answer
In Foley 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 Foley: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $2,770 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $1,939.
Electric resistance heat in Foley, compared
Plenty of homes in Foley heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $555 a year, which recovers the extra $7,500 spent going electric in roughly 13.5 years.
How Foley compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Foley's winter puts it at rank 2806 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1425 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Foley, AL
Foley, Alabama is home to about 28,043 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. In Foley, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Foley's 3.05 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Homes in Foley without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.