Heat Pump Payback in Hurricane, UT
Will a heat pump pay off in Hurricane, UT?
Hurricane 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 $5,500 more up front here. Lower bills claw that back: about $194 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 28.3 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Hurricane.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Hurricane. Look one up here.
Hurricane's weather, in the numbers that matter
3006 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Hurricane has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 3290 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 19°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 17.1°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.16 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Hurricane 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. Source: NOAA station St George Municipal Airport, 13.7 miles from Hurricane, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Hurricane
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 2,409 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $684 a year. That compares with roughly 31 Mcf a year of gas at Hurricane's $10.19 per-Mcf rate, about $878 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 13.12¢/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 $2,585 behind.
How sensitive Hurricane's result is to prices
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Hurricane if electricity rose past 33.6¢/kWh from 13.12¢, or gas fell under $3.98 per Mcf from $10.19. A useful quote test for Hurricane: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $1,940 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $1,358.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Hurricane has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hurricane's answer improves. The saving here runs about $874 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 11.4 years.
Hurricane against the rest of the country
Hurricane lands at position 1926 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1624 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step if you live in Hurricane
Hurricane, Utah is home to about 24,753 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 Hurricane, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Hurricane's 3.16 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a 19°F design temperature, Hurricane sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.