Will a heat pump pay off in McKinney, TX?
McKinney sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. Lower bills claw that back: about $341 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 10.3 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — McKinney's numbers don't point clearly either way.
McKinney's weather, in the numbers that matter
Degree days tell the story here: McKinney racks up 1985 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 2940 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 12°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.99 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. McKinney 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 MCKINNEY MUNICIPAL ARPT, 4.3 miles from McKinney — the closest one on record.
McKinney's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,681 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $676 a year. McKinney's gas rate of 19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 21 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,017 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 39.6 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,608 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in McKinney has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $751 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 10.7 years.
How McKinney compares nationally
McKinney lands at position 2428 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 106 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Next step for 227,526 people in McKinney
McKinney, Texas is home to about 227,526 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 McKinney, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind McKinney's 2.99 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a 12°F design temperature, McKinney sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.