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 $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Lower bills claw that back: about $194 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 18 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Hurricane.

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 record low of 17.1°F on file. 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 ARPT, 13.7 miles from Hurricane — the closest one on record.

The month-to-month numbers for 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 — against a local electricity rate of 13.12¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 69.5 years; over 15 years the net position sits $585 behind.

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 $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 9.2 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 for 24,753 people 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.