Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Stephenville, TX
In Stephenville, the math is close enough that it comes down to how long you plan to stay. $3,500 is what Stephenville 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. That premium is recovered through $317 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 11 years. Whether that's worth it in Stephenville depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
Why Stephenville's climate drives this number
Stephenville has a mild winter by US standards — 1866 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 2667 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 14°F here (record low 9.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.04 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Stephenville — 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 CLARK FIELD MUNI AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 2.4 miles out.
The month-to-month numbers for Stephenville
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,554 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $618 a year. Stephenville's gas rate of 19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 19 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $936 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 42.5 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,260 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Stephenville 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 $703 a year comes back this way, enough that the 11.4-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Stephenville ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Stephenville's winter puts it at rank 2497 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1771 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Stephenville, TX
About 22,147 people live in Stephenville, 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, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
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 Stephenville's 3.04 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Stephenville's 14°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.