Heat Pump Payback in Riverton, UT
Is a heat pump worth it in Riverton?
Riverton technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Riverton's residents would see roughly $110 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 50.2 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Riverton.
Checking a different city
Riverton is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
How cold Riverton actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Riverton racks up 4667 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1804 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 19°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 12.2°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.16 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Riverton needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Salt Lake City International, 18 miles from Riverton.
The yearly running costs in Riverton
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,740 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $692 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 49 Mcf a year at $10.19 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $802 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 13.12¢/kWh). If the current system still worked and you replaced it anyway, the full cost would take longer than the 15-year equipment life to earn back; against buying a new furnace and AC regardless, the 15-year total lands $3,856 behind.
How sensitive Riverton's result is to prices
Gas would only overtake the heat pump in Riverton if electricity rose past 16.8¢/kWh from 13.12¢, or gas fell under $7.94 per Mcf from $10.19. A useful quote test for Riverton: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $1,100 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $770.
Electric resistance heat in Riverton, compared
Not every home in Riverton has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Riverton's answer improves. About $1,165 a year comes back this way, enough that the 8.6-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Riverton ranks in this dataset
Riverton lands at position 1029 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 875 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 Riverton
Riverton, Utah is home to about 46,680 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 Riverton, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Riverton's 3.16 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Riverton's 19°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.