Heat Pump Payback in Lehi, UT
Is a heat pump worth it in Lehi?
Lehi technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $5,500 is what Lehi would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Lehi's residents would see roughly $50 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 109.1 years. Lehi's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Lehi. Look one up here.
Why Lehi's climate drives this number
Lehi has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 5203 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1246 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 12.9°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was 12°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.01 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Lehi 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 Provo Municipal Airport, 15.8 miles from Lehi, the closest one on record.
Lehi's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,377 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $714 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 54 Mcf a year at $10.19 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $764 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 13.12¢/kWh). Priced as a standalone purchase, with a working furnace ripped out early, payback would take longer than the 15-year equipment life. Measured against the like-for-like replacement instead, a household here ends 15 years $4,744 behind.
The break-even point in Lehi
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 14.4¢/kWh (it is 13.12¢ now) or gas drops below $9.26 per Mcf (now $10.19); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Lehi. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $50 a year saved, a difference under $350 pays back within 7 years here, and under $500 within 10.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Lehi heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Lehi's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,227 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 8.2 years.
How Lehi compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Lehi's winter puts it at rank 559 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 372 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.
What to do with this number in Lehi
About 93,446 people live in Lehi, Utah, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page, the 3.01 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Lehi's 12.9°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.