Is a heat pump worth it in Texarkana?

This one's marginal in Texarkana: it only clears if you stay long enough. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). That premium is recovered through $343 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 10.2 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Texarkana's numbers don't point clearly either way.

How cold Texarkana actually gets

Texarkana has a mild winter by US standards — 1769 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 3023 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 18°F, against a record low of 10.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.13 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Texarkana — 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 TEXARKANA REGIONAL AIRPORT-WE, the closest NOAA station, 1.4 miles out.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,431 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $532 a year. That compares with roughly 18 Mcf a year of gas at Texarkana's 19.25 per-Mcf rate — about $875 a year — against a local electricity rate of 13.28¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 39.4 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,639 ahead.

Electric resistance heat in Texarkana, compared

Gas isn't universal in Texarkana — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Texarkana's answer improves. About $583 a year comes back this way, enough that the 13.7-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.

Where Texarkana ranks in this dataset

Among 3206 cities, Texarkana's winter puts it at rank 2554 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1388 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.

Next step for 28,897 people in Texarkana

Texarkana, Arkansas is home to about 28,897 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 Texarkana, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Texarkana's 3.13 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Texarkana's 18°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.