Will a heat pump pay off in Fulshear, TX?
This one's marginal in Fulshear: it only clears if you stay long enough. 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). Fulshear's residents would see roughly $321 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 10.9 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Fulshear's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Fulshear actually gets
960 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Fulshear barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 3429 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 24.8°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 17.6°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.3 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Fulshear needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. These numbers come from HOUSTON EXECUTIVE AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 7.5 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 737 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $591 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 10 Mcf a year at 19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $912 a year (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 42.1 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,311 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Fulshear heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Fulshear's answer improves. Switching saves about $519 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 15.4 years.
Fulshear against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Fulshear comes in at 2920 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 749 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 54,629 people in Fulshear
Fulshear, Texas is home to about 54,629 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 Fulshear, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 3.3 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Fulshear's 24.8°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.