Will a heat pump pay off in Paragould, AR?
This one's marginal in Paragould: it only clears if you stay long enough. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Paragould's residents would see roughly $360 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 9.7 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Paragould's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Paragould actually gets
Paragould has a mild winter by US standards — 2792 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 2062 cooling degree days. 9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 3.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.92 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Paragould — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from JONESBORO MUNICIPAL ARPT, the closest NOAA station, 17.1 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for Paragould
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 2,421 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $555 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 29 Mcf a year at 19.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $915 a year (electricity here runs 13.28¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 37.5 years; over 15 years the net position sits $1,894 ahead.
Electric resistance heat in Paragould, compared
Plenty of homes in Paragould heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. About $739 a year comes back this way, enough that the 10.8-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Paragould ranks in this dataset
Paragould lands at position 2002 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1329 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 30,680 people in Paragould
Paragould, Arkansas is home to about 30,680 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 Paragould, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
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 2.92 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Paragould's 9°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.