Is a heat pump worth it in Pasadena?
Pasadena 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. Pasadena's residents would see roughly $314 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 3.2 years. That's a real payback, built from Pasadena's own climate and utility rates, not a national guess.
The climate behind Pasadena's payback figure
806 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Pasadena barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 3571 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 32°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 19.4°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.15 on the standard unit fit for this climate. A standard ducted system is enough here; Pasadena's design temperature doesn't justify the cold-climate premium. Source: NOAA station ELLINGTON FIELD AIRPORT, 2.8 miles from Pasadena — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Pasadena
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 648 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $596 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 8 Mcf a year at 19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $910 a year (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 35 years, leaving the 15-year total $3,711 ahead.
Electric resistance heat in Pasadena, compared
Plenty of homes in Pasadena heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Pasadena's answer improves. The saving here runs about $481 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 11.4 years.
Where Pasadena ranks in this dataset
Pasadena lands at position 2966 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 182 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.
Next step for 149,617 people in Pasadena
About 149,617 people live in Pasadena, Texas, 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
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Pasadena's 3.15 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. See what Pasadena's figure looks like without the $2,000 federal credit in the guide to how that credit moves the payback window.