Will a heat pump pay off in Fort Worth, TX?
Fort Worth sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. 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). Fort Worth's residents would see roughly $353 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 9.9 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Fort Worth's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Fort Worth actually gets
1912 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Fort Worth has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 3091 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 15.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 8.1°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.06 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Fort Worth — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from FT WORTH MEACHAM INTL ARPT, the closest NOAA station, 2.7 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for Fort Worth
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 1,582 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $681 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 20 Mcf a year at 19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,034 a year (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 38.3 years; over 15 years the net position sits $1,788 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Fort Worth — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $748 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 10.7 years.
How Fort Worth compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Fort Worth's winter puts it at rank 2465 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 11 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.
Next step for 1,008,106 people in Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas is home to about 1,008,106 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 Fort Worth, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Fort Worth's 3.06 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Fort Worth's 15.1°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.