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Texas households paid 14.94 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2024. In El Paso the air conditioner runs for months at a stretch, from spring into fall, so that rate applies to a lot of hours. A higher SEER2 rating means the system uses less electricity to move the same heat out of the house. Over that many months of running, the difference between an efficient system and a tired one shows up on the bill every time it comes. Ask about the SEER2 rating on any system you're considering before you decide.
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Cooling in El Paso starts up in May.
Put the new system in during April and it's already settled in before it has to work.
Cooling runs May through September here, five months of the system working almost every day. June, July and August bring afternoon highs averaging 95 degrees, and that's the load it's built for, not an occasional spike. A system sized too small for the house will run close to constant trying to keep up. One sized too big will short cycle, kicking on and off without actually pulling the heat and humidity down, and that wears parts faster too. Either mistake shows up sooner in a climate that runs the equipment this hard. Getting the size right matters as much as anything else in the install.
A system installed here has to meet at least 14.3 SEER2, the minimum for this region. That floor is already higher than what the rest of the country requires, so what's available to install here starts at a better place. A federal tax credit is available for qualifying high-efficiency equipment, worth looking into alongside the SEER2 rating when you're comparing systems.
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Get the sizing from a load calculation on this house, not a guess based on the old system or square footage alone. That's the only way to know the right size before five months of near-daily running tells you the hard way. Ask the contractor for the number before you sign anything.
Tonnage, coil size and duct changes all follow from that room-by-room number. A house that needs more tonnage costs more in equipment no matter who installs it, and if the existing ductwork can't move enough air for the new system, modifying it adds to the job before the condenser ever goes in.
A furnace already in place can often keep its place in the lineup, but the coil that sits with it has to match the new outdoor unit, and an old coil usually gets swapped along with it. If the line set, the disconnect or the electrical whip need to be replaced to meet current code, that work goes into the job too, even though none of it is the condenser itself.
Estimates for a typical El Paso County home, from EIA household energy data, Texas fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
On install day the old outdoor unit comes out first, then the coil above the furnace if it's being swapped. The line set gets disconnected and the refrigerant in it gets recovered into a tank, not vented into the air. Setting the new condenser is the fast part. What takes the time is pulling a vacuum on the line set and coil to clear out moisture and air before any refrigerant goes in. Skip that step and the system runs with moisture in it for years. Once it's running, a good installer checks the charge against the subcooling and superheat numbers for that specific equipment rather than just turning it on and calling it done. The house won't have cooling while any of this is underway, so plan around that stretch of the day.
