Will a heat pump pay off in Uvalde, TX?
Uvalde sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. 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). Lower bills claw that back: about $339 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 10.3 years. Whether that's worth it in Uvalde depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
The climate behind Uvalde's payback figure
Uvalde barely has a winter to speak of — 1063 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, at 3588 cooling degree days. 23.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 15.6°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.27 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Uvalde 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. These numbers come from GARNER FIELD AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 2 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 823 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $627 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 11 Mcf a year of gas at Uvalde's 19.42 per-Mcf rate — about $966 a year — against a local electricity rate of 16.15¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 39.8 years, for a 15-year net position $1,585 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Uvalde has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Uvalde's answer improves. Switching saves about $559 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 14.3 years.
Uvalde against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Uvalde comes in at 2864 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2337 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 Uvalde
About 15,589 people live in Uvalde, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Uvalde's 3.27 seasonal COP and payback figure. Uvalde's 23.9°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.