Mount Pleasant, TX: the heat pump payback math
In Mount Pleasant, the math is close enough that it comes down to how long you plan to stay. $3,500 is what Mount Pleasant would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Lower bills claw that back: about $290 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 12.1 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Mount Pleasant's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Mount Pleasant actually gets
1994 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Mount Pleasant has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 2084 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 16.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 8.4°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.11 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Mount Pleasant 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 MOUNT PLEASANT RGNL ARPT, the closest NOAA station, 4.4 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 1,623 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $549 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 21 Mcf a year at 19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $839 a year (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 46.5 years, leaving the 15-year total $855 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Mount Pleasant heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Mount Pleasant's answer improves. The saving here runs about $702 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 11.4 years.
Where Mount Pleasant ranks in this dataset
Mount Pleasant lands at position 2425 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2273 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.
What to do with this number in Mount Pleasant
Mount Pleasant, Texas is home to about 16,238 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 Mount Pleasant, 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 Mount Pleasant's 3.11 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a 16.9°F design temperature, Mount Pleasant sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.