Heat Pump Payback in Pueblo, CO
Is a heat pump worth it in Pueblo?
In Pueblo, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $89 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Pueblo's numbers say wait.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Pueblo. Look one up here.
Why Pueblo's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Pueblo racks up 4943 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1313 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 1°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -11°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.72 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Pueblo, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station Pueblo Memorial Airport, 5.8 miles from Pueblo, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Pueblo
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,602 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $946 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 51 Mcf a year at $11.17 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $856 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 16.53¢/kWh). With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $6,841 behind.
What would change Pueblo's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Pueblo if electricity fell to 14.3¢/kWh (from 16.53¢) or gas rose above $12.91 per Mcf (from $11.17). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Pueblo, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Pueblo, many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Pueblo's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,405 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 7.1 years.
How Pueblo compares nationally
Pueblo lands at position 826 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 292 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
What to do with this number in Pueblo
About 111,166 people live in Pueblo, Colorado, 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, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Pueblo's 2.72 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Pueblo's 1°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.