North Las Vegas, NV: the heat pump payback math
North Las Vegas clears a genuine payback here, inside a reasonable stretch of years. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $1,000 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. That premium is recovered through $307 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 3.3 years. That's a real payback, built from North Las Vegas's own climate and utility rates, not a national guess.
Why North Las Vegas's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: North Las Vegas racks up 1846 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 4446 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 25°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 24.4°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.95 on the standard unit fit for this climate. A standard ducted system is enough here; North Las Vegas's design temperature doesn't justify the cold-climate premium. These numbers come from NELLIS AFB AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 4.2 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for North Las Vegas
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 1,585 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $755 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 19 Mcf a year at 13.14 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,062 a year (electricity here runs 14.04¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 35.8 years; over 15 years the net position sits $3,604 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in North Las Vegas — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and North Las Vegas's answer improves. The saving here runs about $711 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 7.7 years.
Where North Las Vegas ranks in this dataset
North Las Vegas lands at position 2516 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 73 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 North Las Vegas
About 294,034 people live in North Las Vegas, Nevada, 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, it's worth getting quotes before your current system fails, not after.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page — the 2.95 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. See what North Las Vegas's figure looks like without the $2,000 federal credit in the guide to how that credit moves the payback window.