Hays, KS: the heat pump payback math
Hays technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. 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). Hays's residents would see roughly $125 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 28.1 years. Hays's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
The climate behind Hays's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Hays racks up 4726 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1406 cooling degree days on the cooling side. -5.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -16.1°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.58 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Hays — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station HAYS REGIONAL AIRPORT, 3.7 miles from Hays — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Hays
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,638 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $878 a year. Hays's gas rate of 14.81 per Mcf, applied to the 49 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,003 a year, against 15.05¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 108.3 years, for a 15-year net position $1,630 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Hays has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hays's answer improves. About $1,197 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.7-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Hays against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Hays's winter puts it at rank 1003 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1830 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Hays, KS
About 21,213 people live in Hays, Kansas, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Hays's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Hays's 2.58 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a -5.1°F design temperature, Hays sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.