Will a heat pump pay off in Baraboo, WI?

Here in Baraboo, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. 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). Running costs here land $394 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Baraboo's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Baraboo's weather, in the numbers that matter

5845 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Baraboo has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 668 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -6.9°F, against a record low of -10.5°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.53 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Baraboo sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, BARABOO WISCONSIN DELLS AIRPO, 4.1 miles from Baraboo.

The month-to-month numbers for Baraboo

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,850 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,211 a year. That compares with roughly 61 Mcf a year of gas at Baraboo's 10.74 per-Mcf rate — about $817 a year — against a local electricity rate of 18.87¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $9,413 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Baraboo, compared

Plenty of homes in Baraboo heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Baraboo's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,745 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.6 years.

Where Baraboo ranks in this dataset

Baraboo lands at position 275 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2641 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step for 13,096 people in Baraboo

Baraboo, Wisconsin is home to about 13,096 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 Baraboo, 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 Baraboo's 2.53 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Baraboo's -6.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.