I have recently installed a programmable thermostat on my heat pump system. I set back the temp to 62 degrees at night and back up to 70 degrees at 6AM. I notice that at 6AM when the thermostat calls for heat, the aux heat kicks on to assist. Is this normal? Am I still saving money over maintaining a constant temp all night? Is there some override option to temporarily defeat the aux heat to allow the heat pump to gradually restore the daytime temperature without drawing on the aux electric heat?

Any time you are running strait electric heat you are not saving money. This is one of the major problems of having a heat pump setup with a set back thermostat.

More expensive thermostats allow you to provide a lock out of the more expensive strait electric heat when the system is trying to recover from a programed setback.

Sorry to say but heat pumps and setback thermostats for the most part do not get along since it takes a strait heat pump a long time to recover the temperature after a set back and that in turn kicks in the electric heat to speed up the process. Actually the amount of money could turn out to be negative.

Just think if the heat pump was let alone and run at a steady temperature.
Then the higher cost electric heat would not come on.
It only takes one hour of strait electric heat to equal the money spent on running a heat pump for four or five hours.

Interesting and I guess you can see from my statement how you could be actually spending more money by setting back your thermostat with a heat pump/electric furnace combination.