Heat Pump Payback in Fulshear, TX
Will a heat pump pay off in Fulshear, TX?
The payback math works in Fulshear on paper, past the equipment's own working life. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Fulshear's residents would see roughly $321 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 17.1 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Fulshear.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Fulshear. Look one up here.
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 low of 17.6°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.3 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Mild on average, but the occasional cold snap is what sizes the equipment: at a 24.8°F design temperature Fulshear falls just under the 25°F line where a standard heat pump starts leaning on resistance backup, so the model prices a cold-climate unit to be safe. 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 including the old AC (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). If the current system still worked and you replaced it anyway, the full cost would take longer than the 15-year equipment life to earn back; against buying a new furnace and AC regardless, the 15-year total lands $689 behind.
The break-even point in Fulshear
In Fulshear 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 Fulshear: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,210 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,247.
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. The gap still doesn't close: the $10,000 incremental cost outlasts the 15-year equipment life here even against resistance heat.
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 if you live 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.