Pearland, TX: the heat pump payback math
A heat pump earns back its extra cost in Pearland within a sensible timeframe. $1,000 is what Pearland 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. Pearland's residents would see roughly $318 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 3.1 years. That's a real payback, built from Pearland's own climate and utility rates, not a national guess.
The climate behind Pearland's payback figure
795 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Pearland barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 3633 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 32°F here (record low 19.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.15 for the standard class of unit this climate calls for. A standard ducted system is enough here; Pearland's design temperature doesn't justify the cold-climate premium. Source: NOAA station CLOVER FIELD AIRPORT, 5.5 miles from Pearland — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Pearland
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 639 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $603 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 $921 a year (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 34.6 years, leaving the 15-year total $3,766 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Pearland heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $482 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 11.4 years.
Pearland against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Pearland comes in at 2971 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 224 by population, where 1 is largest. 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 Pearland
About 129,620 people live in Pearland, 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
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Pearland's 3.15 seasonal COP and payback figure. See what Pearland's figure looks like without the $2,000 federal credit in the guide to how that credit moves the payback window.