Heat Pump Payback in Moore, OK
Moore, OK: the heat pump payback math
In Moore, the extra upfront cost technically comes back, just not before the equipment wears out. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Moore's residents would see roughly $225 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 24.4 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Moore.
Compare against another city
Moore is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
How cold Moore actually gets
Moore has a mild winter by US standards, 2787 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 2356 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 8.6°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was 0.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.91 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Mild on average, but the occasional cold snap is what sizes the equipment: at a 8.6°F design temperature Moore falls just under the 25°F line where a standard heat pump starts leaning on resistance backup, so the model prices a cold-climate unit to be safe. These numbers come from University Of Oklahoma Westhe, the closest NOAA station, 5.4 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Moore
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 2,425 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $581 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 29 Mcf a year at $13.99 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $806 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 13.10¢/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 $2,122 behind.
The break-even point in Moore
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Moore if electricity rose past 29.4¢/kWh from 13.10¢, or gas fell under $6.23 per Mcf from $13.99. A useful quote test for Moore: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $2,250 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $1,575.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Moore has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Moore's answer improves. Switching saves about $744 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 13.4 years.
Moore against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Moore comes in at 2010 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 617 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Moore
Moore, Oklahoma is home to about 63,845 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 Moore, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Moore's 2.91 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Moore's 8.6°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.