Heat Pump Payback in Midvale, UT
Midvale, UT: the heat pump payback math
Midvale technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. That premium is recovered through $110 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 50.2 years. Midvale's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
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The climate behind Midvale's payback figure
4667 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Midvale has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1804 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 19°F here (coldest 2024 reading 12.2°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.16 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Midvale 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. These numbers come from Salt Lake City International, the closest NOAA station, 12 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Midvale
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,740 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $692 a year. That compares with roughly 49 Mcf a year of gas at Midvale's $10.19 per-Mcf rate, about $802 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 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 $3,856 behind.
How sensitive Midvale's result is to prices
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 16.8¢/kWh (it is 13.12¢ now) or gas drops below $7.94 per Mcf (now $10.19); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Midvale. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $110 a year saved, a difference under $770 pays back within 7 years here, and under $1,100 within 10.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Midvale heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,165 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 8.6 years.
Where Midvale ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Midvale's winter puts it at rank 1032 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1138 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.
Next step if you live in Midvale
About 36,219 people live in Midvale, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 3.16 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Midvale's 19°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.